The American Debate: 9/11 changed everything only briefly

The Iraq war thus far has wound up costing us nearly $1 trillion - and it wasn't paid for, because the administration decided to fight it without raising taxes, a radical break from the American war-making tradition. Instead, we borrowed money from nations like China, which is one big reason we're so grievously on the hook.

So perhaps the impact of 9/11 has lingered after all - not as a spur to unity, but quite the reverse. The tragic attacks provoked the United States to make tragic strategic choices that in turn helped create the debt-ridden economic headaches that we are compelled to endure today. And those headaches have in turn fed the appetite for partisan argument.

No wonder Obama seems almost nostalgic for that bygone unity. In a newspaper column the other day, he insisted that "we can regain the sense of common purpose that stirred in our hearts 10 years ago. . . . That's the America we were on 9/11 and in the days that followed. That's the America we can and must always be." But, perhaps to his political detriment in 2012, he's stuck with the irony that a safe America is a cacophonous America. We're hard-wired for fierce disputation; not even 9/11 could change that.

Contact Dick Polman at dpolman@phillynews.com or @dickpolman1 on Twitter.