Print
It’s safe to say most Americans who were alive on Sept. 11, 2001, remember precisely what they were doing the moment they heard New York and the Pentagon had been attacked. Less certain is whether many of us have a similarly clear recollection of the following Oct. 7, when U.S. planes began bombing Afghanistan, starting a war that would last nearly 20 years and cost vastly more lives and resources than the terrorist attacks that spawned it.
I remember where I was: in my college dorm on a Sunday, on the phone with my mother (no iPhone alerts in those days). World-changing as many of us knew the war would be, at the time it felt like yet one more grim alteration of our reality among many — the armed National Guardsmen in fatigues patrolling airports, the terrifying spike in anti-Muslim hate, the agitation for revenge against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and now a war. The attack on Afghanistan, unimaginable a month prior, felt oddly ordinary when it happened.