One more thing...

The events that unfold here and abroad are not outside of the Master's plan. Maybe we are the instruments of God for a part of His plan for that area? The OT is full of examples of how God used pagans, thieves, and Idolaters to carry things out. Why not America? Of course this is not a pleasant question to pose. If you ask this, you have to face the inevitable question: What if God was using the terrorists to punish America on 9/11? A dead end arguement because we can never know.

As a thinking Christian, I find the paradox of the soverignty of God co-existing with the free will of man to be so mind boggling. I believe, at the end of the day, that we cause a lot of bad things (fruit of our own free will), but God in his soverignty uses them for his good purposes in the end.