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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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I remember that when I was studying Political Science at the university in Sofia one of the most interesting topics for me was the period before the World War II and more precisely how Hitler prepared plans for the invasion against innocent countries and how the western allies weren't ready at first to meet this challenge. Till the end of 1938 most people in the UK, France or the USA believe that the war may be avoided. Only one of the prominent British politicians at that time - Churchill didn't believe in the good intentions of Hitler and call for all countries for united military response*.

Unfortunately this response came too late and that war took the lives of almost 60 million around the world, just for the madness of a few.

In the last years I tried to understand in vain why the West, mainly the USA didn't want to complete their military missions in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein was defeated in 1991 but Iraq had not been occupied. After the first bombing in WTC in 1993 the US government didn't begin a fight against the organizers of this act. Some by pure chance were brought to justice but some are still at large. After the Embassy bombings in 1998 there was only a limited military retaliation. Maybe in Washington and Brussels people thought that these acts would pass like summer storms? They simply didn't read their history books.

All this reminds me the European political theater in the late 30s. Hitler wasn't stop when he occupied Austria, when he decided to occupy parts of Czechoslovakia then whole the county. The war against him began when he decided to wage a military campaign against the West and Russia. The same applied to Japan. They were defeated but at what price! Bin Laden or who-else has been behind all this knows (like Hitler did) that if you want to rule the world and to set the rules you have to destroy the leading nation. In our case this are the USA. And not only to defeat them but to defeat their image around the world so no country could expect any help from Washington in times of trouble.

These thousands of victims are only the "first bullet", intended to be a warning "If you don't follow OUR rules, this may be repeated, this time with far more dangerous weapons used against your cities".

Forget about the Palestinian cause, it probably has nothing to do with the attacks. The real cause is the oil and natural gas that come from the Middle East. The Western economies depend on it and will depend on for many decades ahead. If someone puts hand on these reserves he will have a say in the world affairs. If this someone is Saddam or Bin Laden don't expect any good news for the Western world.

So which are the options for retaliation? I see at least three major kind of plans if we consider that terrorists won't surrender right now and that the United States will be obliged to use force.

The first option (both stupid and ineffective) will be to strike with bombs and missiles the presumed headquarters of the terrorists (in Afghanistan or anywhere else). This is the cheapest and speediest way of retaliation. There is no need of any special preparations. Everything is kept in secret even from the allies. The whole cost may be even less than $200-300 million. There will have many casualties on the ground like in the 1998 but I doubt that the chiefs will be killed. This solution in fact will only make an illusion among the American people that something has been done. In reality this will be only a letter of invitation for the terrorists to strike again on American soil.

If we use the history as a parallel this solution will mean to try to deter Hitler by bombing once or twice Berlin at the beginning of the World War II.

Second (not so stupid but also very ineffective) will be to send ground troops (maybe several thousand) in some location of Afghanistan to hunt for the terrorists. The cost will be several billion and the casualties among the American troops will be inevitable. The terrorist infrastructures will be destroyed in one place but the networks around the world will remain intact. Like octopus with cut tentacles the terrorist organization will regain its forces and the new strikes on US soil will be also a matter of time.

Again if we make some parallel with the history that will mean to defeat Hitler at the battle ground and leave him to rule Germany while liberating the rest of Europe.

Third option (the only real solution no matter the cost) requires engaging in a long war around the whole world. Maybe it will require occupying several countries like Afghanistan or Iraq or both. Maybe it will require too mobilizing millions of new soldiers and spending hundreds of billions of dollars. Casualties probably will be hundreds of thousand maybe even millions.

Sound terrible but is it less terrible to know that using thousands of civilian planes flying each day terrorists may destroy our world just in a couple of hours by bombing our nuclear or chemical facilities or river dams? And as a matter of fact what represent these $100 billion or even $1 trillion compared to all we already have built on this earth and we want to protect for ourselves and for our children? Sooner or later we'll have to make this third option. I hope it won't be too late by that time.

* - When Churchill learned that Chamberlain sold Czechoslovakia to Hitler in Munich he said: "We had to make a decision between the shame and the war. We have chosen the shame and as a reward we will receive a war".