9/11 Post

It's been five years since I sat at my desk, scanning the internet for details, wearing a pair of oversized audiophile headphones, so that I could listen to NPR without interruption. I'm a "post Cold War instability" geek - when they announced that a second plane had hit the WTC, I knew excatly what had gone down and wanted to know every possible detail of the situation.

What do you write about 9/11? Who's deaths need to be honored? The 3,000 who died in the initial attack or the thousands of troops who have died in our failed retaliation? The tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who's lives are now far more uncertain and insecure than ours are? It's an event that both contained and triggered such a dark wealth of tragedy and horror that it's diffcult for me to make sense of much of the past half-decade, or to see any light at the end of the tunnel.

I really don't know what to say, other than to acknowledge that the era of post Cold War uncertainty appears to be descending towards a worst case scenario, triggered by the actions of nineteen fools and their masters who have been allowed far more power and relevance than they deserve. We now live in interesting times, and are probably unfortunate for it.

There's a tremendous amount of commentary on today's significance out there on the web today, but I'm particularily fond of this post from the boys and girls over at Defense Tech, which I think says all that needs to be said.