At war
: Glenn Reynolds points us to Christopher Hitchens’ typically iconoclastic view of the September 11 anniversary: “The time to commemorate the fallen is, or always has been, after the war is over. This war has barely begun.”
Yes, that’s a stronger version of what I have been saying: that I resent the hushed tones that treat us as victims when we are still combatants.
And so I was shocked to see the Newsweek cover that says “433 have died in the war on terror.”
It stopped me cold: 433? That’s about 3,000 short, isn’t it? Newsweek adds those numbers inside but why not on the cover?
The people who died on September 11th died in the war on terror. And, for that matter, so did scores before on the Cole and in the Beirut barracks. And that’s just the attacks aimed at America. Add the victims and soldiers of this war on terror in the rest of the world and that’s a helluva lot more than 433. This war didn’t start yesterday. This war is not over yet. This war is bigger than we are admitting. This, let’s remind oureselves, is World War III.
