In response to 9/11, our nation made the mistake of embarking on an unwinnable "War on Terror" rather than more rationally containing and discouraging terror. Now, ten years later, we are still at war, and have opened the door to a new vision of "normal"—a normal in which surveillance, detention and secrecy are unquestioned parts of our lives. Racial profiling is no longer reviled, but rather practiced and lauded. 

In this video produced by Francis Reynolds, The Nation‘s Katrina vanden Heuvel, Patricia Williams, Eric Foner, Jonathan Schell and David Cole—many of whom were some of the first writers to try to analyze and explain the tragedy after it happened—commemorate 9/11, ten years later. 

—Anna Lekas Miller