The War in Afghanistan is Approaching Its Eighteenth Birthday.

I haven't written this before. I'll save the tearjerking details of "where I was" and "the moment my child saw the video" for some other time. What is on my mind this morning is the night of the eleventh. My memory is this: I'm in the bedroom with my wife, we're both exhausted by that day.

I know that memory is tricky, but what I recall is telling her "I'm afraid our country's response is going to be bombing a bunch of brown people." Probably about the same time (if not earlier), Dick Cheney was in a meeting and wondered aloud whether the attacks could be our pretext for "doing" Iraq.