Try as I may, it is hard to wipe today’s date from my mind. To begin with, my No. 1 son was only blocks away. He can still feel the two towers in his knees. Even at the edge of Europe, in the wilderness that is Istria, September 11 is impossible to forget. What is the score, though? On the one hand, at most three-thousand Americans dead, including all the soldiers involved in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A score or two of British soldiers should be added to the count, of course. On the other hand, untold thousands of civilians, including women and children, fighters of every description, and soldiers. By the roughest of estimates, at least twenty and at most fifty people dead for each and every dead American. Clearly, the Americans are winning by a wide margin. Or are they?

Addendum (June 14, 2016)

This piece strikes me as kind of quaint so many years later. So much has happened since that fateful date. Afghanistan came along soon after Iraq. It was followed by much of Northern Africa, but Libya comes to mind at once. The country is still in strife after quite a few years. The current war in the Middle East is still raging as I write, and Syria is in shambles by now. More important, the strife has spread to America and Europe, as well. In addition to America, France and Belgium got hit the hardest, but many other countries in Europe are also at risk. And the story is far from finished yet. By now, there are many thousands of people dead for each and every American who perished on September 11, 2001. The score is pretty amazing, but it is far from finished a decade and a half later. The Americans are winning by an ever-wider margin, to be sure. Or are they?