9/11: Ten years later

Attacks indelibly market American pyche

The day in crystalline sunlight and endlessly in blue skies but soon whipsawed into a decade of war, economic meltdown and deep political division.

Ten years after Islamic terrorists hijacked passenger jets and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sep. 11, 2001, the American that emerged from the smoke and rubble was in some ways a very different country.

How different?

Fisrt, a story: it's said that when President Richard Nixon made his groundbreaking visit to Communist China in 1972, he asked Premier Zhou Enlai what he thought about the French Revolution.

It's unclear whether Zhou thought Nixon was aking about the political upheaval of 1789 or the Paris student demonstrattions just hour years earrlier. In case he replied: "Too soon to tell".

It might be soon to fully understand the impact of 9/11 as well.

Did it somehow help spark the Arab Spring because our response unleashed so much upheaval in the Middle East?

Or the tea party, which harnessed an anxiety that America had lost control of events and turned that intoan intimidating political force?

It was easier to gauge the fallout on the day itself. From the moment of impact, the terrorist struck not only concrete and steel but the notion of American might and invincibility.

From crowded to one-stoplight towns, from farmsteads to factories and across the rugged spaces where the singular character of American has been mythically chiseled and shaped, the nation held its collective breath.

Perhaps we still do.

(Anchorage Daily News, September 11, 2011; Alaska - USA)

Read the following setences I, II and III:

I. The stroke against World Trade Center and the Pentagon smit America's heroism.

II. Since the rubble laid after hijacked jets crashed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, America raised dissimilary.

III. Richard NIxon's groundbreaking visit to Communist China in 1972 is as hard to be explained as the French Revolution.

It's possible tp assert