As usual, Digby’s right: in the face of terrorism, everyone seems to be regressing to an infantile state and craving a daddy figure to protect them.
In fact, this also explains why this particular reaction to terrorism is so strong amongst the Christian Right: like Freud argued in The Future of an Illusion, the origin of religion may be found in the child’s feeling of helplessness, which leads to the wish-fulfillment of a heavenly daddy figure who will protect them from the slings and arrows of life. They’ll believe in, and vote for, anyone who makes a credible claim that he’ll protect them from the evil ones.