StratFor recently asked it’s readers “What would be the thrust of U.S. foreign policy today if the 9/11 attacks had never occurred?” I’ve read a few books about counterfactual history and thought I could get a lot out of the exercise. So, for nearly all my free time last week, I wondered and wrote. Next week, I will learn the results of the contest and I’m looking forward to posting my response to the question.
More important than the contest result, though, is the enjoyment of tackling the question. I basically gave myself a homework assignment.
Monday, I learned of the contest in an email. I took down notes immediately. Now fast forward a few days. Thursday night I had a few glasses of wine and continued writing. What started in my HTML editor moved into Word and then was finalized in PDF. The project moved of its own accord, strongly changed shape at least three times, and then settled down into a final form. All along the way, there were a hundred choices that I could have made. I’m not even sure how I made decisions. I just cut, copied, and pasted my way to a finished product.
Have you ever made your way to work in the morning and then realized that you can’t recall the specifics of the journey? It was like that.
The resulting post is here. What follows (in the embedded Scribd doc) is the result of my writing:
