Nope. As my cousin reminded me today, there were a lot of people in the World Trade Towers who came from other countries. Wikipedia says 372 of them, or over 10 percent of the total. I'm sure a lot of people have fallen into the error of talking about "almost 3000 Americans". Here's one, which seems to be a DOD site for vets and families.
I think that sort wrong generalization is something humans do.
Carter Malkasian's "The American War in Afghanistan" has gotten some good reviews and a lot of attention, since its publication coincides with the end of the war as far as the US is concerned.
I'm most of the way through it. It's good, though it gets criticized on Amazon for the writing. I'm not as critical as the reviewer--Malkasian likes simple subject-verb-object sentences which usually are clear and give at least the aura of objectivity. He overuses them. I'm more bothered by some of his tics: like using "assessed" as a synonym for "judged,..." and by converting nouns to verbs (which these days seems to be considered as good writing by some).
One thing which is striking about the content: the complexity of Afghan society, about which I may write more later. When you imagine our military in 2002 trying to understand what they're dealing with, you get a sense of the difficulty of their job.
Some things are true, among them:
One of the lessons we should take away from our involvement in Afghanistan is that Americans don't react well to unexpected events. Looking back on 9/11 I think it was, as I remember thinking at the time, a lucky shot. But we reacted hysterically, especially after the anthrax attacks. That's not something I said on this blog then, because I wasn't blogging then. Might I have said something like that had I been blogging--perhaps, but unlikely. Too much of an outlying opinion. At some time I would have been comfortable saying that 9/11 was a lucky punch, a combination of circumstances and strategy which worked, but which wasn't likely to be repeatable.
But we overreacted after 9/11. I think we're overreacting now to the August exit from Afghanistan. It's not the end of the world, it's not major damage to the reputation or influence of the US.
Remembering our childhoods with a relative this morning. Two things I thought of later:
images on a screen are much more powerful than news on radio, much more novel.
most of middle class America regularly went to the movies, so newsreels were the medium for people to see images of the world. I don't think there was much competition in providing newsreels.
Along Reston Parkway near Town Center there's a project underway, trying to squeeze in a turn lane between the existing roadway and the buildings. For some reason instead of just putting in a roadbed maybe 12 inches thick, they've been excavating several feet down, perhaps to run some utility pipeline or something.
They had a small road roller, maybe 4 wide, sitting in the excavation on Tuesday. I drove past it today--the good red Virginia clay at the bottom and sides of the excavation was holding the water Ida dropped when she passed by. The water was up to the axle of the roller, likely 15 inches or so. I'm impressed by the ability of the clay soil to hold the water
At our plot in the community garden about 1.2 mile south of there our rain gauge showed 4 inches falling between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, most during a thunder storm which I heard and went back to sleep again. This year National Airport has been wetter than average while Dulles has been several inches below average. Ida dropped more rain on us than on Dulles, which only got about 2.5 inches.
I would take all the refugees who pass basic security checks. It's not realistic to advocate for open borders; too large and rapid a flow of immigrants stresses the social fabric but the people who are now leaving Afghanistan are leaving because of our involvement there since 1979, regardless of whether they worked for us, with us, or simply within the environment we helped create.
I felt the same way about Vietnamese refugees in the 1970's, and I think that's worked well for us
The book is being widely quoted in the media as we grapple with the ending of 20 years of conflict. It's highly rated on Amazon, and no. 2 best seller on Afghanistan war.
One tidbit--in the start of the war, from October 2001 to March 2002, we had 12 military killed. In the last 10 days of the war we had 13.
It's roughly 460 pages of text; I'm 100 pages in. More comments as I progress.
I follow Atul Gawande in the New Yorker and his books, particularly his advocacy for checklists (an indispensable tool for bureaucrats). The new print issue of the New Yorker has an article by him concerning health in Costa Rica.
Costa Rica has longer life spans than the US while spending much less on health care. Gawande credits the way in which they have done public health, a systematic way of having health care professional interact with everyone in their district.
To my mind it's another example of the benefits of government focusing on the "last mile", the connection between government and the citizen. FSA does it well for its clientele and programs but the US pattern is to have government work through states and localities.
The possible release of Sirhan Sirhan has prompted a bit of discussion of Robert F. Kennedy's role in American history, and his prospects.
Early on I was torn between Hubert Humphrey and JFK. Humphrey was the stalwart liberal, the speaker on the floor of the 1948 convention, the Senator leading liberals in the 1950's. JFK had charisma and seemed more popular. Defeating Nixon was important, and difficult; less important and less difficult than defeating what's his face last year, so after West Virginia primary showed JFK could win Protestants I accepted his candidacy.
Robert was the kid brother, feisty. (Interestingly, I find in my memory I had conflated Ted and RFK's college records, to the discredit of RFK.) His reputation among liberals was marred by his work first with Joe McCarthy and then investigating labor corruption with Sen. McClellan. It probably hit a low point when his brother named him attorney general.
Bobby's reputation rose during the 1960's, first with civil rights and then on Vietnam, reaching its peak with me with his speech when MLK was killed.
I'm not sure whether I would have supported RFK or HHH finally. Humphrey didn't fare well as LBJ's Veep. It likely would have come down to the man who ran best against Nixon. We know HHH lost, barely. I think it's likely that RFK wouldn't have been able to unite the party; LBJ would have borne his grudges too long for that.
So, my bottom line is I don't think American history changed because of Sirhan Sirhan. It would have been different, but Nixon would have won, the divisions in the Democratic party would have been there, perhaps even deeper than they were. And Nixon would have continued to be paranoid against whichever Democrat seemed strongest in the lead up to the 1972.
