Heh, funnily, I know I wasn't sane. I bought the "weapons of mass destruction" and "pre-emptive strike" lines and the notion of not letting the terrorists win.

What happened, I think, is much more banal. Everyone was pissed at such a large successful terrorist attack. Politicians took that as a strong signal that they must do something. And the easiest solutions were new policing agencies, privacy invasion, and invading sovereign nations. Those were easy answers to sell to angry citizens. They were also the wrong answers that lead to hundreds of thousands dead, the region destabilized, new larger terrorist organizations (ISIS/ISIL) and trillions of dollars wasted.

The right answer just wasn't flashy. Locking cockpits, diplomacy with Afghanistan leaders, and ultimately intelligence gathering and a targeted strike on Osama bin ladin if he was found. We Americans wanted blood, what we needed was to address the holes that made the attack possible and to just move on.

And unfortunately some countries today are not learning the right lessons from our failures