The matter of retaliation by the American government during terrorist attacks is one major advantage for terrorist organizations, said David Carwell, assistant professor of political science and specialist in terrorism issues.

After the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon Tuesday morning, the American people want to retaliate, but who do we retaliate against?

Many news mediums are calling the attacks the second Pearl Harbor.

However, unlike the attack on Pearl Harbor, there is no country or sitting government to retaliate against, only an unknown terrorist organization, Carwell said. Time and money must be spent to find out the terrorist organization that organized and carried out the attack.

He said that the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were the result of a lot of preparation and called it a “well-coordinated” attack.

“Retaliation is in the air,” Carwell said. “However, it is difficult to strike back. If you don’t have a country or sitting government that is behind the attacks, then who do you go after?”

Carwell does believe, however, that who or what organization that was behind the attacks will be pinpointed in a short amount of time because of the high level of disaster.

“Within a fairly short period of time (the American government) will know who or what was involved,” Carwell said. “Exactly what to do is hard to determine.”

Eastern’s Emergency Management Team’s meeting Tuesday morning was standard precaution during an attack of this size on the nation, Carwell said. Even though the chance of a terrorist attack on Eastern’s campus is minimal, until the targets of such an attack are determined, it is smart to develop a plan of action.

“Nobody was really worried. It was just standard precaution,” Carwell said.

He said terrorism is something that will always be an issue for this country.

“The United States has been surprisingly immune to terrorism.

“However, for 20 years people have been saying something like this was going to happen. This is a free country, a country easy to move around in.”

Carwell said he doesn’t foresee any long-term changes in the American government, but there will be many short-term changes, such as increased security in areas all over the country.

“People will become more aware of terrorism and increase security precautions just like they did after the Oklahoma City bombing,” he said.

“Very little could have been done to prevent this once it started. Preventing terrorist attacks takes a significant amount of money, manpower and intelligence that the government just doesn’t have at their disposal.”

A large amount of criticism will be heaped on the CIA and the FBI during the next few days for not being able to give the American people some type of warning that these attacks were going to take place, Carwell said.

“The answer the community is going to get is that they did the best they could with what they had available to them.”