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At the Republican National Convention in New York City just a little while ago, there was a great deal of romanticizing of 9-11-01. It was a day, we heard, that demonstrated the best in America. And in many ways it was. But 9-11 as a great triumph of the human spirit isn't the 9-11 I recall on the ground. I remember it as a terrifying, horrible, confusing day followed by several terrifying, horrible, confusing weeks.

I don't know how it felt out in the vast American Expanse to the south and west of New York City, but for those of us -- a very large proportion of America's political, intellectual, and media elite -- whose roots and physical existence are and were in the Boston-Washington corridor it was a time spent under seige. On the day in question, no one quite new what was happening. It seemed inevitable that there would be more attacks, and soon, very possibly on slightly lesser cities like Boston. And with the coming of the Anthrax Scare it looked like there were more attacks. The country was mobilizing for war in Afghanistan, a war that -- at the time at least -- raised the specter of being a real war of the old school with high casualties and all. And if that's what it took to win, most of us were prepared to accept it. But for those of us under 40 it was the prospect of something we'd never experienced and it was destined to occur in a far-off land of which we knew little.

For many of us under-30s, the attacks were just about the first time in our adult lives that we were confronted with real fear -- the paralytic fear of events that are barely within our comprehension, let alone our sphere of control. With the cold war burned out, I remember, in the 90s, that random plane crashes kinda scared me.

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