In fact, the same *has* been said about many Americans' surprise. I think I mentioned that a friend of mine who had been on Wall Street on the day of the attacks turned to me that night and said, "Now America knows how the rest of the world feels."
And I'm not at all talking about grief, which can exist in the complete absence of surprise. I'm talking about a certain kind of naivete which is an exercise of privilege. Whether this has been exemplified in the Oden case, I'm not sure, but it is exactly what motivated Bush and Co. to talk about the End of American Innocence.
>Besides, leftists can gain no political
>mileage by saying that "you should have seen it coming" in either the
>Oden case or the S11 bombings case, so why bother?
Viz. S11, because there's only so much of "We never attack civilians" and "they hate us because we're free and democratic" and "America has now seen evil" that I can take before my gag reflex self-activates.
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