"how high school texts portray 9/11: a critique" Topic

link

Run away, run away, it's a conservative!!

All five texts get the basic facts correct. Is that all that matters?

For comparison, here's how Bill McClay covers 9/11:

Bush's administration had great difficulty in rising above the acrimony. It did so for a short time, however, thanks to the unified national response to a horrifying event: the successful attack of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York City by al-Qaeda terrorists flying hijacked commercial airliners into the buildings, a suicide attack that killed three thousand people and did untold damage to property in lower Manhattan. In addition, a third hijacked plane was flown into the Pentagon in Washington, and a fourth was headed for the White House and the Capitol, only to be forced to the ground in rural Pennsylvania by heroic passengers. These attacks of September 11, or 9/11 as the day soon became known, were a wake-up call to a country that had largely ignored the jihadist terrorist threat. To an amazing extent, the divided American public rallied around its political leadership, largely supporting Bush in his efforts to respond effectively to the attacks.

But the political harmony did not last very long. When Bush resolved to adopt an aggressive posture toward potential sources of terror, including the use of "preemptive" attacks to stop the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction (WMDS) by terror organizations or their state sponsors, Democrats cried foul; and when an invasion of Iraq in 2003, prompted by the belief that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling WMDS, became bogged down and threatened to destabilize the entire region, Bush's approval ratings plummeted and never came back up. By 2005, some of the same people who had cheered his response to 9/11 were calling for his impeachment.

McClay, Wilfred M.. Land of Hope (p. 417). Encounter Books. Kindle Edition.

McClay had earlier described the abortive truck-bomb attempt on the World Trade Tower. The "acrimony" mentioned in the first sentences quoted above was of course the very close election of 2000.

Not surprised, maybe better than would have guesses which wouldn't have been much.

In comparison with the first five, McClay is a bit more sympathetic to Bush, and emphasizes the American response.

The nearest equivalent to the US reaction to 9/11 (when it was impossible to buy a flag, they were all sold out) would be the aftermath of Jackson's victory at New Orleans. I always play for the kids "The Hunters of Kentucky", mass media at the time. It MADE Jackson a national hero and had all sorts of short- and long-term political consequences. But there have been a number of such waves of patriotic fervor that have swept the nation, over the past two centuries. One wonders whether something similar is possible now? I hope so.