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>>I 99% agree with you, but 9/11 was AFAIK the first major loss of lives on American soil due to "foreign" combatants. I don't think the Aleutians in WWII "count" for most Americans and IAC that was a declared war.
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>>I think "loss of innocence" has a poetic ring but doesn't accurately describe the aftermath.
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>i REALLY was going to stay out of this but I hate the phrase "loss of innocence" so much as vapid newsanchorspeak that I just can't.
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>Innocence had nothing to do with it. Ignorance, yeah.
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>Most Americans couldn't have found Afghanistan - hell, Europe - on a map if you spotted them a hemisphere and had no idea what Islam was, let alone Al Queda.
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>The first World Trade Center attack didn't even convince the President it was worth meeting with the CIA director on a regular basis. Kobar Towers, the Cole, and a whole lot of good Marines dying in Beirut, not to mention Bill Buckley's tortured body being thrown out of a car, Iranians using kids to clear minefields, Saddam being Saddam, what happened in Hom (yeah, Syria and the Assads were there before a month ago) ... none of that made real the idea that there are people in the world who hate a lot and consider indiscriminate killing on a large scale to be a holy act or at least just a good way to deliver a message. (Hell, we consider doing that stuff and don't even have to crank up a lot of hate to do it)
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>So it was a wake up call big enough to wake up the people who could not have given less of a shit until that point. And in fairness to the "innocent" - they should not have had to.
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>It pointed up the amazing failure of most of the intelligence community who had already whiffed badly in the 80s regarding the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and who were the ones being paid to know and to care and to be the damn watchers on the wall.,
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>It showed just how much danger we are in when intelligence remfs are building kingdoms and guarding their fiefs instead of doing their damn jobs and when politicians don't realize their 'oversight" just makes it worse because it makes the management at Langley and FBI and everywhere else more like them.
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>Anyone who lost faith in elected leaders as a result must have not been paying attention before hand. The professional bloviators for the most part are completely unqualified and even those who are sharp enough that they could have made a difference have to pick their fights and play a public pander game.
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>It was chickens coming home to roost. from the Church committee and the Deutsch appointment and believing that if we just close out eyes tight enough no one can see us.
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>And that the Saudis are even a little bit our friends.
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>It was lesson for those who believe that "people are really the same everywhere and we all really want the same things".
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>It was what happens when the people who were supposed to be gaming this never heard their rabbi repeat over and over "Okay, now turn the board and play black."
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>We perhaps lost some of "our" certainty or illusion of safety or faith in people "we" thought were doing their jobs but it sure as hell wasn't our innocence.
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>We lost a lot. We learned a little. Since then we've over reacted, misdirected, under reacted, behaved bravely, behaved badly, used our military in ways they - and those they are "helping" don't deserve.
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>And we have had done in our names wonderful and terrible things we will never know about.
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>But we've survived for a dozen years and we will continue to muddle on as we have for the last 250 and all things considered a lot of things could have been a lot worse.

I'm not a fan of waxing poetic about tragedies/disasters/warfare etc. Emotions are high, the temptation is great and there are a very, very few shining examples to try to emulate - but it almost always ends badly.

It may comfort some to turn the Western world into a funeral home once per year, with the associated platitudes and euphemisms, but blunt talk is far more useful.

My very first thought on reading Mike's post was I abhor the royal "we" in cases like this. The second was "No, some people lost some of their ignorance" but it seemed a little insensitive to post that on the anniversary. Thank you for your blunt talk.