Customer Reviews

9/12: New York After

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Inevitably, essays on 9/11 written in the days and weeks afterward suffer from the passage of time and new facts and information. These ruminations seem horribly stale and somewhat knee-jerk leftist. The essayist isn't just a poor man's Howard Zinn, but a very, very poor man's Howard Zinn. (And I like Howard Zinn.) Why do we care about his ruminations, again? He's a translator and editor of Latin American and Chinese poetry and prose. I'm not sure his thoughts on 9/11 are worth much more than my dog groomer's.

Weinberger is one of my favorite essayists. He will skewer anyone and do so with absolute style. He is not a "crrrritic" so much as a commentator. So 9/12. It is frightening to read your own fears mirrored in someone else, to be able to vocalize terror at one's own government. Oddly, the most frightening portrait is not of Bush, that weak-minded tool of his own advisors, but of Condie Rice as "Xena, Warrior Princess." We are in huge trouble here. Indeed we need regime change here as it was needed in Iraq (no, I don't think Saddam was bum-rapped: he was a monster)--but the mood of the nation has been so manipulated that it's unlikely a change will occur back toward the left in my lifetime. I'm 61...and I hear the marching charging feet (yeah).

Read this little book. Be afraid.

Have read enormous amounts on this topic. This is by far the weakest, least informative, most useless material available. Don't bother.