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In retrospect, I can understand the shock of the 9/11 attacks more fully. Back then, a decade after the fall of the Soviet Union and before the rise of China, when the U.S. seemed the singular imperial power on Planet Earth, that anyone — yes, anyone! — would dare assault not just the American homeland but the symbolic heartland of its economic power (the World Trade Center) and its military might (the Pentagon) seemed next to inconceivable. And yes, if that was a long sentence, it was also a long and devastating moment — and at the time only Chalmers Johnson had truly imagined such “blowback.”