Team Alpha

Twenty years later, plus Understandably Live. Also, 7 other things worth your time.

Team Alpha at K2 air base in Uzbekistan on October 16, 2001, in front of the Black Hawk that flew them into Afghanistan that night.

Three things I remember from right after 9/11, besides my intense shock, anger, and sadness.

• First, saying to my girlfriend at the time, in all seriousness, in the minutes after the second plane hit the World Trade Center and it was clear that this was no accident: “My God. Saddam Hussein is so stupid. How can he not understand that we will utterly destroy him for this?”

• Second, wryly joking with my brother on the phone an hour or two later: “If only we’d had national missile defense.” (Ancient history now, but in 2000, George W. Bush had made advocating for national missile defense a big issue in his campaign.)

• Third, especially in the weeks that followed: impatience. “How long is this going to take?” I exclaimed to a friend at one point, probably around the end of September, before there was any word of US boots on the ground in Afghanistan.

I share these e…