the war journal

"They say Sept. 11 was the current generation's Pearl Harbor, and I believe that," Wenger said. "But World War II ended with an official surrender and peace treaty, so everybody knew exactly when they could take their flags down. I highly doubt this thing's gonna end with President Bush and Mullah Omar signing an armistice on the deck of the USS Theodore Roosevelt. Ah, screw it—I'll just leave the things where they are."

In October 1993, 18 US soldiers died during a botched mission in Mogadishu. The incident is the subject of a new film, Black Hawk Down. But, asks Alex Cox, why have the deaths of the Somali civilians been forgotten?

The Mirror Project | Redrick

The Air Force Flier In the Ointment

Exactly what that would mean for McSally became clear immediately. In a briefing right after she arrived, officers matter-of-factly laid down the rules for travel off base, even on official business: All female personnel would wear the customary head-to-toe gown, the abaya and its matching head scarf, similar to the Afghan burqa. They could not drive. They would ride in the back seat. They would be escorted by males at all times.

Patriotism on the Cheap

This is where we were, and it is why our new closure feels so empty. Rather than visit the new, tourist- friendly ground zero, a sharper antidote to complacency may be to travel uptown to a Sept. 11 exhibition at the New-York Historical Society, where a 25-minute impromptu video of the attack, aptly labeled "a Zapruder film for our time" by The Times's Sarah Boxer, runs continuously. The video is jagged and its images are not suitable for framing. It plays out as spontaneously as its cameraman, Evan Fairbanks, shot it. There are no logos, no crawls, no flag graphics, no network anchors to mediate between the viewer and the unfolding events — in fact, no sound at all, either on the tape or from those watching it in stunned silence.

The most obvious bold national project that Mr. Bush could launch now — his version of the race to the moon — would be a program for energy independence, based on developing renewable resources, domestic production and energy efficiency. Not only would every school kid in America be excited by such a project, but it also would be Mr. Bush's equivalent of Richard Nixon going to China — the Texas oilman weaning America off of its dependence on Middle East oil. That would be a political coup!

But challenged by his father to take up true religious scholarship, Abou El Fadl began a journey of Islamic learning that would transform him into a nemesis of the extremists he once endorsed. Today, at 38, he is a leading warrior in the intellectual struggle that exploded into America's consciousness Sept. 11: Who speaks for Islam? Who defines it?

Averted Disaster Captured on Film