The United States has irrevocably changed since Sept. 11 and now must find the right way to respond to terrorist threats, a panel of four speakers told about 300 community members and some Northwestern students Monday night.

The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations sponsored the panel discussion at the Omni Orrington Hotel.

James O’Shea, managing editor for The Chicago Tribune, moderated the panel that included an economist, two professors and a former special envoy to the Afghan resistance.

Although a U.S. victory in Afghanistan may not be clear or complete, any success would significantly limit terrorism as a threat to national security, said Douglass Cassel, a professor at NU’s School of Law.

A military response is exactly what the terrorists anticipated, however, because they aim to build support in the Arab and Muslim world by provoking the United States, said Cassel, director of the Center for International Human Rights. He said the terrorists already have widespread support from the Arab world because of “a pervasive sense of powerlessness and a collective identity crisis” in the region.

Creating a political entity to replace the Taliban regime in such an impoverished nation is essential, although other countries should not meddle in the process, said Peter Tomsen, past ambassador to several nations and former special envoy to the Afghan resistance.

“It is a mistake for any outside power to speculate on who should be in the next Afghan regime,” Tomsen said.

Tomsen, who has researched and traveled in the Afghan countryside, added that bin Laden probably is hiding in caves and tunnels along the Hindu Kush mountain range that runs east and west across Afghanistan.

Discussing the economic implications of the attacks, Diane Swonk, a chief economist for Bank One Corp., described the recession as “one of the oddest in history.”

“We are in a tunnel and we don’t know how deep or long it is, but the light at the end of the tunnel is brighter than it was on September 11,” Swonk said.

Another speaker downplayed down the seriousness of the threats facing the United States.

“Although the terrorist threats cannot be dismissed, they are not so serious as the media would have us believe,” said Mitchel Wallerstein, vice president of the Program on Global Security and Sustainability at the MacArthur Foundation.

“It is imperative that we not overreact and blow biological threats out of proportion,” Wallerstein said.

Weinberg freshman Alison Goldstein said Wallerstein particularly impressed her, but she enjoyed listening to the entire panel.

“I thought it was marvelous that they had speakers from four different realms of the world,” Goldstein said.