Thoughts and Memories

Metal burnt

Earth melted

Spirit reigned supreme

Through fire flame and destruction

They gave their all

Sacrificed life, the ultimate freedom

That others may live

Nine years ago today an attack that I think few are able to fully comprehend occurred on American soil.  It was not a nation-state that assaulted our shores but a radical group, one bent on the destruction of Western civilization as it has been known for the past 500 plus years.

In Hamlet, Shakespeare through the play’s title character speaks, “For some must watch, while some must sleep / So runs the world away.”  On September 11, 2001 many were watching over those who were victims, both in body and spirit.  The heroes of the tragedy will little be remembered as the years pass.  The firemen, police officers, and civilians that laid down their lives to save all they could will, inevitably, one day be forgotten.  Their names lost to history, their service but some half-remembered dream.  Nine years ago passengers on a jetliner, people who at any other time may have been nothing more than a name and social security number when their lives were done stood up against evil men and sacrificed their own lives to save others.

These heroes all waved goodbye to their family that day not knowing it would be the last time they would see, hear or speak to them.  But, in the end I have no doubt that they knew that at some point they would be reunited in a better place.

In my mind September 11^th will not be remembered as a day that America showed herself to be vulnerable to other, that we suffered a great loss that we may never fully recover from as a nation, rather I see it as a constructive force.  It brought us together like nothing save possibly Pearl Harbor or the American Revolution was able to do.  I remember members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican, singing “God Bless America” on the steps of the Capital after the events took place.  It didn’t matter that two weeks before these men and women may have been close to hating each other for their difference in ideology, it only mattered now that they were American and all felt the same need to help a nation in mourning.

The simple truth is, the terrorists didn’t win then and they haven’t won now.  We are still standing, still that shining beacon of freedom and liberty that our Founding Fathers saw this country as being.  And so long as we remember the sacrifice which has been made to keep this country secure and its people safe we will remain as such.