Never Forgetting 9/11 Means Accurately Retelling the History

It’s been twenty-five years since nineteen Islamic terrorists slammed jetliners into the heart of America’s financial and military centers. Were it not for the heroic passengers aboard Flight 93, they would’ve taken out the Capitol. In our post-truth era, it’s more important than ever to accurately retell the horrific history.

It was a day of contrasts, with good and evil in stark juxtaposition. For clarity’s sake: the terrorists, including the man behind them, Osama bin Laden, were responsible for the evil unleashed on thousands of innocents. Those innocents, including firefighters, other first responders, 9-1-1 dispatchers, the people who helped each other escape the Towers and the Pentagon, and the Flight 93 passengers—they were the heroes, doing as much good as they could despite the jaws of Hell opening beneath them.

It wasn’t just Americans who died on Sept. 11. The terrorists murdered citizens of seventy-eight countries. The destruction in New York alone was worth about sixty billion dollars. Among the dead in Manhattan, 343 were firefighters, twenty-three were police officers, and thirty-seven were Port Authority officers. Eight children, between the ages of two and eleven, died on the planes.

That talking heads have suggested America deserved 9/11 should horrify all of us. That some politicians have cozied up to those talking heads should remind us how to vote.

I lived and worked in the D.C. area on 9/11, and I had the honor of reporting on a college at Ground Zero that lost students and property. I immersed myself in the countless stories surrounding the attacks and their aftermath. To this day, I continue to learn new things.

Everyone who lived through September 11 has stories. Keep telling them. Without a regular recitation of our history, our republic will continue to erode.