History News Network -- 9-13-01
We always think of ourselves as innocents. Like virginity, you can lose your innocence only once. But we seem to lose ours over and over again: after World War I, after World War II, after the Kennedy Assasination, after Vietnam. We forget our own history. The history that afflicts the rest of the world--war, depression, ugly violence--doesn't happen here, we believe. History doesn't happen here. We are beyond history.

The price we have paid for our naivety has been high. In the 1930s the belief that we were independent of history led us to take seriously the claims of isolationists, who contended that we safely could ignore the rise of fascism. In consequence we let the army wither and let Hitler and Tojo build vast war machines powerful enough to threaten our security.

Osama bin Laden and his ilk are the new Hitlers. They are fanatics. You cannot reason with them. They are beyond appeals to reason. Trying to reason with them is like trying to reason with a Nazi.

We have a right to be shocked. What has been done to us IS shocking. But we must disabuse ourselves of the notion that what has happened is contrary to the laws of nature. It is our belief in our existence outside history that is unfounded. That some people want to kill us should be a self-evident proposition.