"My reactions to 9/11 were, from the start, different from everyone else's. As we watched on the office television, somebody said with horror, "I can't believe this is happening in Manhattan!" To which, I thought, why not? Many countries had, at some point in the previous 90 years, experienced the effects of aerial bombardment, sometimes from American forces. Why should we regard Americans as uniquely immune from such barbarity? The US, after all, had become the world's sole great power and it revelled in this status."