Elbridge A. Colby ’02, however, described calls for peace as “sanguine,” and said the appropriate response is “a sort of cold, unyielding anger.”
“These people have no problem using innocent people as a cover for them,” Colby said, referring to terrorists. “The blood is on their hands, not ours.”
But even as he urged an aggressive response, Colby also urged some measure of restraint.
“Anger is appropriate... Anger needs to drive us to a certain extent. But we need to keep in mind that there are innocent people,” he said.
Other students seemed to echo this note of caution. Kofi A. Kumi ’04 said certainty about the perpetrator’s identity should precede U.S. action.
“Everyone’s like, ‘Hurry, hurry, make sure we punish someone,’” Kumi said. “If we act like that, it makes us no better than the people we’re after.”
Tong “Max” Chen ’04, a student from China, said he felt a firm response was called for from the U.S. But he also cautioned that an intransigent foreign policy may be partly to blame for what has already happened.
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