Submitted by Alan Edwards, Apr 3, 2007 11:30

I suspect that Mark Hayes, deep down, sympathises with the views expressed by Howard Rothman. Since that dreadful day (I was driving the A12 in the UK and listened as the whole horror unfolded) I have had much time to reflect on what happened and what the effect was on the American psyche; my friend Anne was on the first flight out of Boston after 9/11 and she arrived at our door with her hair still standing on end.

War has ever been a distant phenomenon for the modern American since the days of the Civil War, and the shock of vulnerability is discovered in the fact that an organised terrorist campaign could impact so decisively right in the heart of one of the major cities of the new world. That, combined with a feeling that the leaders in the home of the brave and the free might not be telling the whole and unvarnished story about that day.

Now there is another focus on the events and this time the images are not fleeting or to be analysed in motion time after interminable time. The photographs concentrate the mind beautifully on the unpalatable which is what makes this book so valuable. The photographs allow Americans to linger over the image and encourage them to ask pertinent questions. Rothman's "tirade" is a grace note to the images; I fear that Hayes merely wants to hide behind the party line and to pretend that the terrorists never came.

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