I think most people don't realize that in terror attacks, the direct damage (e.g. bomb going off and killing people) is only collateral, means to an end - the real damage is causing a severe overreaction in the target (think of auto-immune diseases). Halting a city down for a day can do orders of magnitude more damage than some bomb killing some people.

This should really be taught in schools: the right way to deal with a terrorist attack is to just ignore it. Classify it as any other action of an organized crime group and have police handle them using established procedures. Treating such act as special and spreading fear is actually doing terrorists' work for them.