A Time to Remember

Of course, we remember this day.

The question is, will we still remember it four years from today? Or twenty years from today? Or forty years from today?

We all have our own personal memories of that day. I remember walking into a colleague's office and looking at a small tv screen, thinking from the pronouncement that a Cessna had somehow gotten lost on a cloudy day in New York... then realizing it was far different. I remember exchanging phone calls with the Lord of Truth wondering what would happen next, then learning in horror that the Pentagon had been struck. I remember the rumors floating around the office that bombs were going off all around town, that another plane was headed for the city, that the police were chasing mysterious vans all over the city. I remember being unable to reach my then-girlfriend (now wife), only to learn later that she'd witnessed the attack on the Pentagon as her car sat in traffic on the way to work. I remember watching the first tower fall, sick at heart already from the tragic scenes of people falling from the sky. I remember that my cellphone didn't work, and that I called my mom from the office to tell her I was leaving work on foot to get home, because the traffic in town was obscene and I didn't want to stay in town and wait. I remember spending that night and the rest of the week glued to the TV, feeling a combination of shock, anger, revulsion and grief.

I remember all of those things. But most of all, I remember the story of the folks on Flight 93.

There's a part of me that believes that the people on that flight saved my life by acting when they did. Yes, that plane was aimed at the U.S. Capitol, but there's no guarantee that they wouldn't have missed their target and crashed somewhere else in DC.

To me, it's that story that told me we would make it. We were fighting back, even when the other side had the element of surprise, even when it was common everyday Americans who had to lead the fight back.

I remember reading a story once about the evening of December 7, 1941 in Hawaii, when the first of the American carriers returned to port and see first-hand the results of that morning's attack. Admiral Bill Halsey, standing on the bridge, surveyed the damage before uttering the immortal line, "When this war is over, the Japanese language will only be spoken in hell."

Halsey was wrong. The Japanese language is still spoken today. But that's a good thing. But the militarists who led Japan in World War II largely ended their own lives in the final days of the war. So we can take solace in knowing that they're in hell.

A popular joke in the days after September 11th has a father and son walking through downtown Manhatten, and the son, seeing a memorial, asks his father what the Twin Towers were. The father explains the story of 9/11, and explains that Arab terrorists took planes and crashed them into the towers and also the Pentagon. The boy looks at his father and asks, "Dad, what are Arabs?"

The joke is wrong as well. There will be Arabs in 40 years. And if we do things right, most will live in prosperous democratic societies, and the terrorist elements that attacked us will rest in the same hell that those Japanese militarists and their Nazi allies found 60 years ago.

Our job is to remember that day, and remember to finish the job. We need to honor the memory of those who lost their lives that day and since in this war. We need to fight this war with all of the rage and passion and intelligence and spirit that we have brought to every successful endeavor our nation has undertaken in its history. And we cannot fail -- not simply because it would dishonor those memories, but because our very survival is at stake.

We will triumph, because our cause is right, and because we live in a world where good triumphs over evil. We will grieve our losses -- but we will march forward to victory.

And we will ALWAYS remember.