Growing up, I knew well the date December 7, 1941. I wasn’t born then, and I don’t recall my history classes ever teaching World War II, but my parents’ generation and the news ensured that the date would, as President Franklin Roosevelt said, “live in infamy.”
The evening news would replay the black and white film of the attack on Pearl Harbor, thick smoke pouring from the U.S.S. Arizona as it tilted and sank, taking 1,177 lives with it. Newspapers ran anniversary stories, quoting aging soldiers who were at Pearl Harbor that day and regular citizens who knew precisely where they were when they heard the news.
Today we remember this generation’s Pearl Harbor. It was 14 years ago this morning—September 11, 2001—when 19 Islamic extremists from the al-Qaeda movement hijacked four airliners in suicide attacks that killed more than 3,000 innocent people.
This attack’s lasting image is of a Boeing 767 slicing through the south tower of the World Trade Center, while the north tower burned from the impact and explosion of another jetliner that struck 18 minutes earlier.
As we watched in real time the twin towers burn and then collapse and firefighters battle the inferno at the Pentagon from a third attack, we had to ask in stunned disbelief, “What’s happening? Can this be real? Who would have done this and why? What can we do?”
Still, in the face of catastrophic loss, there was remarkable bravery and sacrifice. Nearly 400 firefighters, paramedics and police officers lost their lives trying to evacuate the buildings and rescue survivors.
United Flight 93, the fourth hijacked plane, was foiled from reaching its target—possibly the White House. “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll,” said Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer as he and other passengers stormed the cockpit and overpowered the hijackers. All died when the plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field.
President Bush spoke for America that night when he told the nation, “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundation of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.”
It would take ten long years, but America would finally track down and kill Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the attacks. As President Obama said, “On nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda’s terror: Justice has been done.”
Osama bin Laden’s death was a necessary reckoning, but physical and emotional wounds of 9/11 remain because of the brazen, horrific attacks and the tremendous loss. Our responsibility is to remain vigilant against the existential evil of a sworn enemy and to honor those we have lost to that evil by remembering them.