Who Defended The Country?: A New Democracy Forum on Authoritarian versus Democratic Approaches to National...

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Elaine Scarry Joshua Cohen

Who Defended The Country?

A New Democracy Forum on Authoritarian versus Democratic Approaches to National Defense on 9/11...

Elaine Scarry, Joshua Cohen, Joel Rogers (University of Wisconsin, Madison)

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English

Beacon Press
01 September 2018

International relations; Terrorist attack; Military engineering

Series: New Democracy Forum

Through a minute-by-minute analysis of the phone calls, official reports, responses, and reported actions of passengers on two hijacked flights, United Airlines 93 (which crashed in Pennsylvania) and American Airlines 77 (which crashed into the Pentagon), Elaine Scarry offers a dramatic retelling of their fate and some startling conclusions. Leading off a provocative debate, she asks if the difficulty we had as a country in defending ourselves on September 11 suggests serious flaws in our national security. The need to act in'a matter of minutes' has been invoked to justify military arrangements increasingly outside the citizenry's control, yet the only successful defense on September 11 was carried out, after a vote, by the passengers themselves on hijacked Flight 93.

Arguments made at the time of the writing of the Constitution judged that the only plausible way to defend the home ground was to have actions measured against the norms of civilian life- the military had to be'held within a civil frame.' Scarry asks, have we strayed too far from this model? Does our authoritarian conception of national defense diminish our capacity to protect ourselves? Is it legal? Is it moral? Responding to her argument are nine prominent thinkers and writers from across the political spectrum, including Richard Falk, Ellen Willis, Admiral Eugene Carroll, and Antonia Chayes.

By: Elaine Scarry
Edited by: Joshua Cohen, Joel Rogers (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Imprint: Beacon Press
Country of Publication: United States
Volume: 16
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 10mm
Weight: 184g
ISBN: 9780807004579
ISBN 10: 080700457X
Series: New Democracy Forum
Pages: 124
Publication Date: 01 September 2018
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Elaine Scarry, Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University, is the author of The Body in Pain, On Beauty and Being Just, Dreaming by the Book, and Resisting Representation.

Reviews for Who Defended The Country?: A New Democracy Forum on Authoritarian versus Democratic Approaches to National Defense on 9/11

'Elaine Scarry's consistently radical way of posing essential questions redirects inquiry in the most valuable ways, a tribute to a disciplined and erudite imagination put almost exclusively at the service of democratic citizenship in American society.'--Richard Falk