Did America overreact to 9/11?

Lee Harris says maybe we underreacted. His arguments are pretty good, too. He's done some pretty good work slapping around L.A. Times' David Bell for that bit of nonsense about "Putting 9/11 into perspective":

For example, let us suppose a man comes into your house and shoots your favorite dog in cold blood. You explode in rage and fury, whereupon a calm Professor Bell appears to inform you that during WWII whole families and their dogs were brutally murdered, or that in America thousands of dogs are run over by cars each year. Now both of these facts are true. No point in trying to deny them. But does either of these facts put "into perspective" the wanton killing of your beloved pet? Upon hearing Bell's recital of these indisputable facts, would you immediately say to him: "How right you are, Dr. Bell, and how wrong I was to fly into a rage over the killing of a single statistically insignificant dog. Thank you for putting the matter into perspective for me."

Personally, I think Harris is most correct about the part where he says it's too early to tell.

All this Monday morning quarterbacking, and it's still only the first half of the game...