A lot of people get angry or sad or both on 9/11. Of course, the loss of life in this country was horrible, but for me that date always brings up the manner in which Bush used Americans' sentiments to go to war against a country that had nothing to do with the attack, Iraq. And in this political season, it brings to mind how McCain was ahead of the curve in calling for that war.

Call these sentiments mean-spirited, if you will. How dare I politick on this day of remembrance? Fair enough, but these sentiments have been with me for many years now. They are part of my 9/11, just as are the worries about friends in New York, the story of a colleague’s husband who missed work that day and whose general was killed in the Pentagon office my colleague’s husband usually also occupied, the tales told by people in my building streaming in from downtown reporting alleged bombs in cars around the city, the military helicopters and jets over the skies of DC and the absence of the usual noisy commercial airliners, a child sick at home and a wife working downtown, the activation of a friend in the DC National Guard for years of active duty in this city and Afghanistan, the quiet evening streets for weeks after the attack, the sudden departure of Arab students from my building because their parents back home feared for their safety, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the color-coded warnings, and the never-ending rhetoric and politics of fear.

Or talk about hindsight being twenty-twenty. Thing is, Bush didn’t need hindsight. All he and his advisors needed was a sense of how countries have reacted to attacks in the past. As a historian, I claim no special insights into the future, but I frequently have a fair idea of what we should be paying attention to in the present. I’m good at asking questions, even if my answers aren’t always right. Here’s what I told my shaken students in Washington, DC seven years ago. And still we don’t teach war and society as a fundamental aspect of the human experience in required undergraduate history courses. What a shame.