In his introduction (12/12/08) to an Arundhati Roy analysis of how "our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching 'India's 9/11'" in the Mumbai attacks, Tom Engelhardt recalls that

the single omnipresent historical reference in the American media immediately in the wake of September 11, 2001, was, of course, "Pearl Harbor"--and those code words for it, "infamy" and "day of infamy," splashed in mile-high letters across the front pages of papers. What we had experienced, it was commonly said then, was "the Pearl Harbor of the 21st century."...

Now, "9/11" has become the "Pearl Harbor" of the 21st century, the antecedent and analogy of choice, and so, not surprisingly, it was on all but a few media lips, during the recent massacre and siege in Mumbai, India.

In the piece that follows, Roy "explains just why using 9/11 as the analogy of choice there, as we once used 'Pearl Harbor' here, will lead in no less terrible directions."

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