The danger of terrorism is that it may disorientate the progressive side more than the reactionary side.
So in the hope that it helps to keep focussed, here is a rather short article from the Guardian specifying what the US might do.
Can you not get some people to get Chomsky to make a call against the cycle of retaliation if only to create some space for progressive voices to be heard.
Chris Burford
London
Staff and agencies Tuesday September 11, 2001 The Guardian
President George Bush has already vowed to "hunt down" the terrorists responsible for today's devastating attacks on New York and Washington. The US has a track record of retaliatory strikes when its citizens or property come under attack and some of those strikes have been launched from Britain.
In August 1998 President Bill Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for the earlier bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Tony Blair was warned in advance of the attacks and was the first international leader to publicly endorse the action.
The president and defence officials said the targets were linked to Osama bin Laden - a Saudi millionaire they believed to be a major sponsor of terrorism - though he survived the attack.
Bin Laden's group, the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, responded by issuing a warning that "strikes will continue from everywhere" against the US.
President Clinton also ordered a strike against Iraq in June 1993 for an alleged plot to assassinate the former president, George Bush, in Kuwait two months earlier.
The cruise missile strike damaged the Baghdad headquarters of the Iraqi intelligence service. The Pentagon described the strike as a "debilitating blow" to the nerve centre of Saddam Hussein's terrorist activities abroad.
The US also used British bases to launch a bombing raid on Libya in 1986, in response to the bombing of a Berlin discotheque in which an American soldier was killed. On the orders of President Ronald Reagan, waves of bombers attacked Tripoli and Benghazi, an attack in which a young female relative of Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi died.