It is not possible to imagine with any true depth or clarity the level of shock with which U.S. political elites experienced the events of 9/11. To do that you would have had to be one of those elites, to have spent all your days invested with an inherent sense of America's power and dominant influence on the world. The assured self-confidence of those elites had for generations been at a level that no other nation's political elites could ever approach. Believing in the exceptional nature of the USA and conceiving its effect on the world to be beneficial, benign and invulnerable as it carried out its manifest destiny across the planet that was in essence its domain which carried a God-given duty of vigilant guardianship.
EXCELLENT ARTICLE. BRAVO.