The wanton use of metaphors and analogies may be journalism’s greatest sin; it is much easier to conjure an image of dubious relevance than explain an event marshalling facts and logic. On the eighth anniversary of 9/11, let’s look at what has become the mother of all analogies.

In the years following September 11, 2001, Madrid, London, Bali and Mumbai have all had their “9/11 moment.” In lazy journalistic shorthand, this means that the aforementioned cities suffered a terrible terrorist attack — possibly the worst it has ever experienced — that killed lots of people.

Defining 9/11 simply by the number of people it killed is both reductive and misleading. For the day to serve as a useful analogy, writers must be more specific when they invoke it. Apart from the tragic deaths, 9/11 also caused, however short-lived, a unity of purpose among Americans. Unlike previous terrorist attacks on American soil, the country had decided that it would fight the enemy through military means and without compromise. It is also impossible to ignore that Al-Qaeda had targeted centres of American capitalism and military strength. The symbolic element, too, is impossible to ignore when employing the 9/11 analogy.

If journalists must constantly evoke 9/11, then I would argue that the March 3 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore is the ideal candidate. Cricket symbolises Pakistan just as much as capitalism does the US.  The attack so enraged Pakistanis, especially those in urban centres who had been distanced from the terrorism in the Nothern Areas and Swat, that opposition to the Taliban more than doubled. Just as happened with the US after 9/11, Pakistanis even supported a military campaign in Swat, although such ventures had met with widespread opposition in the past.

At first glance it may appear strange to compare an attack that claimed 3,000 lives to one that led to the deaths of eight people. But 9/11 was as much about the circumstances of and response to the attacks as the death toll itself. In that respect, the events of 3/3 are no different.