Nine Eleven to One Thousand

This arresting NYT data graphic on US soldiers lost in Iraq really shouldn't go unmentioned. I didn't think to say anything on the anniversary of September 11—for the first time, the date came and went without inspiring any conversations around me about the attacks. I saw a short clip on Friday night from a PBS meditation on 9/11—their context with regard to 90s precursors and today's wars, a discussion of bin Laden's motives, a real-time evaluation of the administration's response that morning (Cheney was the only competent player, it seems, a characteristic for which I won't criticize him; Rumsfeld should have been fired that afternoon). It only becomes clearer to me that the war in Iraq will have no effect on the viability of al Qaeda and bin Laden's global model, a problem that is getting worse, not better.

Have 1,000 of our soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis died in vain? No one can say, but it did not escape anyone's notice that George W. Bush had a lot to say about September 11th and little to note about the actual wars we're fighting. Regardless of how bad it gets in Iraq we're still in the shit with al Qaeda, and we don't really know exactly what that means—a point Matthew Yglesias made to commemorate 9/11. All in all, and especially the NYT's reminder that a thousand soldiers lost is 1,000 people killed, Bill Frist can't get that anti–flag-burning legislation passed fast enough.

Presentation link courtesy of Leslie Hall.