A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag : America Today
Peggy Noonan's newest book A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag : America Today was released 
today. An excerpt:
I think 9/11 is like that. People are still changing from it, being affected by it. There are those who have wondered why 9/11 was so cataclysmic, compared with, say, the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, by essentially the same people with the same motives and intentions. One answer is that on 9/11 almost 3,000 people died, and eight years before the number was six. Another is that the Pentagon was in effect bombed on 9/11. America has two great capitals, of politics and money, and both capitals were hit.
Both answers are true. But truest I think is this: The first time the towers didn't fall. The first time they were damaged and unchanged. They were blacked with smoke. We cleaned them up.
We took it--some of us anyway--as a warning. The second time--that was not a warning. That was war. And a war shockingly begun, with two great skyscrapers crumbling to the ground.
You can read the whole excerpt at Opinion Journal.
today. An excerpt: I think 9/11 is like that. People are still changing from it, being affected by it. There are those who have wondered why 9/11 was so cataclysmic, compared with, say, the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, by essentially the same people with the same motives and intentions. One answer is that on 9/11 almost 3,000 people died, and eight years before the number was six. Another is that the Pentagon was in effect bombed on 9/11. America has two great capitals, of politics and money, and both capitals were hit.
Both answers are true. But truest I think is this: The first time the towers didn't fall. The first time they were damaged and unchanged. They were blacked with smoke. We cleaned them up.
We took it--some of us anyway--as a warning. The second time--that was not a warning. That was war. And a war shockingly begun, with two great skyscrapers crumbling to the ground.
You can read the whole excerpt at Opinion Journal.
# | June 11, 2003