September 11, 2010
9/11 Department
A Global Attack
Exactly why terrorists attacked the United States nine years ago is still debated. One fact that is clear, however, is that the United States is a special and unique place in the world.
When terrorists killed nearly 3000 random people on American soil, they ended up killing not just Americans, but citizens of 76 other countries as well.
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Isn't every country unique?
Yes, if that sentence stood alone it would indeed be meaningless. What are some of the attributes which make a country unique? As far as I can remember from my English lessons the next sentence in the original post, set apart as a separate paragraph, is a hook referring to what I think is "special and unique" about the US.
That last sentence is a biased, not statistically analyzed observation demonstrating that I think the US is unique in the extent to which it attracts people from around the world. I would think that would be an easier thing to attack rather than my use of the word "unique" since I did no statistical research on the subject.
I didn't realize a sincere question constituted an attack.
To answer your question: topography, shared identity (doesn't really exist in the U.S.), climate come immediately to mind as features that make a country unique.
If my question were an attack, why would I attack a fact (U.S. immigration policy, statistically, is the most favorable in the world for people trying to enter the U.S) and not a sentence that is meaningless (did your English classes teach you to needlessly split up sentences?).
Sorry, I didn't mean to assign you the exercise of listing national attributes. My mistake. My question was asked of me, not directed at you. It was a device that allowed me to state what I meant by "special and unique".
My English classes taught me to create a new paragraph as an aid to the reader when I develop an idea beyond an introductory paragraph or into a new idea. I probably violated some style rule by having a single sentence paragraph. In that respect I was copying a common technique that I've seen used to good effect which separates a main argument into it's own sentence as a paragraph to create emphasis.
That emphasis could have been created using italics instead. I have a (perhaps bad) habit of not using different fonts. I blame that on the computer interfaces I used for years that didn't allow for special fonts.
I still maintain the sentence is not meaningless unless taken in isolation from the surrounding text. Perhaps it wasn't an attack, but your statement did feel like a troll to me. I'm new to blogging so am probably wrong about that.