Romantics at War
Glory and Guilt in the Age of Terrorism
Chapter One
WAR'S APPEAL
Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.
-Carl Sandburg
When the first plane hit, we thought it was an accident. We did not anticipate an attack. We could not even muster fighter planes fast enough to protect the second World Trade Center tower or the Pentagon. If the passengers on the fourth hijacked jet had not been courageous, we might have suffered even more serious harm in Washington, D.C. But not only our military was caught by surprise. Our minds were also asleep.
We had received all the clues necessary to know that we were in danger. Islamic fundamentalist terrorists had already tried to blow up the World Trade Center. Al Qaeda had attacked the battleship USS Cole and the American embassy in Nairobi. We were put on notice that a dramatic attack was in the offing: We ignored it.
Experts rarely know what is going to happen tomorrow. The sovietologists did not foresee the collapse of the Communist empire in 1989. The market watchers-with few exceptions-did not expect the NASDAQ cras ... read full excerpt from Romantics at War: Glory and Guilt in the Age of Terrorism ebook
