A Message to Terrorists"You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard."What lesson did you hope to teach us with your cowardly attack on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What did you hope we would learn? Whatever it was, know that you failed. "You wanted us to respect your cause? You simply cursed your cause. "Did you want us to fear you? You only strengthened our resolve. "You wanted to separate us? You just brought us together." Let me tell you about my people. We are a large and fractious family, a family torn apart by racial, social, political and class divisions, but a family nonetheless. We are frivolous, yes, capable of expending enormous emotional energy on pop culture minutiae: a singer's revealing outfit, a dance team's misfortune, a cartoon mouse. We too are rich, spoiled by the ready availability of trinkets and material goods, and perhaps because of this, we walk through life with a certain sense of carefreeness. Yet we are fundamentally honest: peace-loving and compassionate. We struggle to know the right thing and do it. And we are, the vast majority of us, people of faith, believers in a just and loving God. "Some people - you, perhaps - think that any or all of this makes us weak. You are wrong. We are not weak. In fact, we are strong in ways that cannot be measured by arsenals." Yes, we are suffering now. We are grieving and in shock. We are still grappling with the unreality of the horrible thing you did, we are still working to make ourselves understand that this is not the special effect of some Hollywood blockbuster, this is not the plot development of a Tom Clancy novel. Both in terms of the terrible scale of their ambitions and the likely eventual death toll, your attacks will likely be remembered as the worst acts of terrorism in the history of the United States and, arguably, in the history of the world. You have bloodied us like we have never been bloodied before." But there is a gulf between making us bloodied and making us fall. This is the lesson Japan learned to its bitter pain the last time someone hit us so hard, the last time someone caused us such sudden and monumental pain.