Simon Schama — the writer/historian whose lectures remain one of my most vivid memories from college days — writes in the Guardian about 9/11 one year on. Choice quote:
| Apparently, the dead are owed another war. But they are not. What they are owed is a good, stand-up, bruising row over the fate of America; just who determines it and for what end? The first and greatest weapon a democracy has for its own defence is the assumption of common equity; of shared sacrifice. That was what got us through the Blitz. It is, however, otherwise in oligarchic America. Those who are most eager to put young American lives on the line happen to be precisely those who have been greediest for the spoils. |
Postscript: I see Joe Conason has also chosen to link to this today (hadn’t read his column before I posted). But hey, he chose a different passage to excerpt.
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