Revenge.

Of all the photos published from September 11th, the photo of a Manhattan tow truck, ash covered with it's lights on, moving destroyed cars from the blocks around the Trade Center is the most important.

Not the photograph of overweight firefighters raising a flag for a posed picture on the smoldering ruins of what was once a pair of 100 story buildings, or the photographs of people posting signs looking for lost loved ones. In 20 years, the single most displayed photograph will be the least valuable and the most staged, not the one that really captured what happened that day. That photo will be forgotten, buried 40 layers deep on an archived copy of CNN.com.

Revenge is a simple sentiment, an emotion that people try to supress. Hand drawn on the large push bumper of a late model truck, it shows the base human reaction to the actions that happened, and the correct response.

Not platitudes of religion, or of understanding why they did it, just simple revenge. You hurt me, I hurt you back worse. Effective and quick.

What we are left with instead, lacking the ability to find the evil person who did it, is a large amount of flag waving, a call for a return to belief in God, or, in some cases, a call to determine the reasons why someone would do this to us, and to become more meek, humble.

On TV specials, the human element has come out. The sob stories, the stories of how someone rescused a handicapped person, of how someones dog, left alone in their abandoned apartment survived a week of neglect. Or maybe more stories about the fireman who died trying to put out the fire.

All of this serves to release the enormity of the event, to pad it down, to make it essentially just another TV show. We shove all the reality out of our minds with stories that are sad, but at the same time, block out the memories of what really happened. Were the images of jetliners crashing and exploding into skyscrapers too much for us to handle, so we replace the vision with something smaller, more tangible?

We replace the thoughts of what the people trapped inside the airplanes, struggling and fighting with the madmen at the controls, with thoughts of firemen racing up staircases to save people. Or the images of sane people, driven to jump off the edge of a gutted and burning building to their certain death, replaced with stories of the rookie cop, his first week on the job. The good thoughts replace the bad. It hurts more to see those evil images in our minds, replayed over and over, but it's better for us if we keep seeing those images. We will be far more determined to find and kill the people who did it if we keep seeing the evilness they wrought upon us. Seeing sad but heroic images of noble firemen will only smooth the reality, and soon we'll hear calls for mercy when we find the source of the terror. Heed not those calls, and kill the men who did this.