I was nervous writing that post, imagining someone would think of even more severe things we lost, that I surely couldn't remember everything while furiously tapping out a post, and they'd glibly refer to it as if I had forgotten the fall of Western civilization had occurred, while I only cared about money!

I told myself this was being far too fearful. Surely those reading would recognize that the absence of every other cost in the post: the lives of hundreds of thousands, mass surveillance, the Patriot act, etc, etc, etc, and recognize that I couldn't enumerate everything in a post that was already too long.

I worried more about narcissistic performance art, someone hopping in, vastly exaggerating with statements like habeas corpus was rolled back! and I had ignored it, and that seemed unlikely as well. Surely this was all manifestation of anxiety, anxiety I have to address.

Thank you for showing that fear wasn't unfounded.

> I was nervous writing that post

We're just exchanging ideas and viewpoints here. Nothing to be nervous about, specially since we're both posting with opaque handles.

> I couldn't enumerate everything in a post that was already too long.

Right. It's just a matter of priorities for a short short list.

> narcissistic performance art, someone hopping in, vastly exaggerating with statements like habeas corpus was rolled back!

I would have welcomed a reasoned response that did not consist in toto of imaginal matters and an apparent personal attack.

Here is another piece of "narcissistic performance art" for you: http://www.nyupress.org/webchapters/hafetz_911_toc.pdf

It's impossible to respond to your post with a response involving reason, you're not appealing to reason.

You made an unfounded assertion, with a scolding for not enumerating your unfounded assertion in my list of consequences of 9/11. This list is no list – it's literally two items that I had chosen specifically for that paragraph because A) they were important to my reasoning B) they were the two explicit goals of al Qaeda operations, decided upon as the best strategy after increasing scare resources limited potential scope of operations, and lack of appetite to become a religious nation-state.

When called on your unfounded assertion and scolding, you attempted to take a step back. You sarcastically mocked my defense, by conflating the time I took to write a long post, with me taking time to write a long list of absolutely every cost to humanity after 9/11. You claimed my response was really just imaginary concerns and a personal attack, complained I didn't engage your unfounded assertion, and posted two pages of the table of contents of an unidentified book.

I spent ~10 minutes trying to learn more about the author and his assertions, and couldn't find any information on Google that would remotely shed light on your unfounded assertion.

Even if I had, it doesn't change anything. The most charitable version of the only argument you've offered is I'm callous to care more about trillion of dollars in economics consequences that our fundamental rights as a society. That's not what happened. All that happened is I built the paragraph around mentioning al Qaeda's only two explicitly goals, and that they had accomplished them at level beyond their wildest imagination.

At the end, I'm thinking, this was utterly a waste of time for the both of us, except you've gotten to engage me two posts in a row now. That's usually the mark of a troll.

I'm OK with letting my responses to stand as they are with a note of objection to your extreme mischaracterization of content and your claims of knowing my 'intent'.

As a helpful final note, here is the NYU Press page with reviews of the cited book: http://nyupress.org/books/9780814737033/