After 9/11 in 2001, W.H. Auden’s haunting poem “September 1, 1939” circulated widely on the Internet. The poem, which described the “neutral air” of New York as war broke out in Europe, seemed to capture the uneasy sentiments of many Americans as they struggled to comprehend the evil done:

September 11 also marks the fiftieth anniversary of the coup that toppled Chile’s democratically elected Ma...