9/11 Edition: Where Are We Now?

Sadly, many words are currently being wasted on "remembrances" of this event now receding into history. Few (of the words) deserve to live. Clearer voices on this day are provided to us by the estimable Tom Englehardt (whose post today features an article by Ira Chernus, who remarks upon how the event sanctioned the creation of an enemy, which the American nation so desperately needed to reinforce its own identity and had been searching for, if unconciously, since the fall of the Berlin Wall), and Immanuel Wallerstein, who notes that the undeniable fact that Empire has been losing ground (i.e., power and influence) pretty steadily the more force and violence it employs around the world, and speculates upon future adventures, based in part on more desperation (and right wing politics). Chaos would also point to the announced strategy of ubervillian Osama bin Laden, who quite rightly was advised that the Empire would respond to attacks with a "cowboy mentality," and play directly to the Muslim world's preconceptions that Americans would invade their lands and take their oil. For further reading on the weakness of violence and the ability of small groups to defend their own lands, see The Unconquerable World, a stoutly written work of vast explanatory power.