The Day that changed everything was not 9/11

So, true.

A war based economy does not do peace so well.

Gotta feed the beast, don't ya know.

TomDispatch - Tomgram: Chernus, Cornered Empire, the Legacy of 9/11:

Yes, it changed everything -- not September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers collapsed, but November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and left the U.S. at sea, drifting without an enemy in a strange new world.

Through four decades of the Cold War, Americans had been able to feel reasonably united in their determination to fight evil. And everyone, even children, knew the name of the evildoers: 'the commies.' Within two years after the Wall fell, the Soviet Union had simply disappeared. In the U.S., nobody really knew how to fight evil now, or even who the evildoers were. The world's sole remaining superpower was 'running out of demons,' as Colin Powell complained.