We Shall Never Forget

Last Friday New York City officials, in response to a lawsuit brought by survivors, released 12,000 pages of transcripts related to the morning of September 11th. Those transcripts included text from police and fire department radio calls from that morning, as well as interviews of firefighters in the days immediately following the events of that fateful day. As I read some of the quotes I simply began to cry, remembering how I felt as I drove to work and heard the story unfolding on the news. When we watched the towers crumble, live, for the first time I was overcome with grief and rage. Worse yet for me, I was on the brink of a serious and as yet undiagnosed coronary blockage which caused my anguish to make me physically ill due to a lack of oxygen. What amazed me most these last days, as I have relived some of those moments, is how quickly we have forgotten the emotions of September 11. For days and weeks and months afterwards our national mantra became, “we shall never forget.” We did. We have forgotten our grief, our anger, our anguish, our patriotism … and our resolve. We have forgotten the images of the planes crashing into the towers, of desperate citizens jumping to their deaths rather than being burned alive, of the two towers toppling down. On that day we all swore that the world would never be the same, that we would never be the same. Are we? To refresh our memories I wanted to share a few things. First, here are two comments made by firefighters over their radios which I believe are especially poignant:

“Send every available ambulance, everything you got to the World Trade Center,” a firefighter calls from engine 1. “Now!”

“Just at that point, my radio came clear as day, ‘Imminent collapse. This was a terrorist attack. Evacuate.’”

Also, let’s review the casualty statistics once again. Here are how many people we lost at each attack venue:
In the Twin Towers 2595
Flight 11 92
Flight 175 65
In the Pentagon 125
Flight 77 64
Shanksville
Flight 93 45

A total of 2, 986 people lost their lives that day. Yet, that is only part of the story. Based upon that unthinkable number, consider how many widows, orphans and widowers were left, along with how many people must have lost sons, daughers, mothers, fathers, grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and so forth. The impact to families, congregations, corporate staffs, neighborhoods and the like makes for a staggering set of permutations, not to mention the emotional effect on the rest of us all these thousands of miles away. As we digest those numbers, let us remember that more Americans were killed on September 11th than we have lost in three years of armed conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. As an additional point of reference, only 2, 403 Americans were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. However, in stark contrast, the victims of the attacks on September 11th were all civilians, which makes their mass murder all the more heinous. No, we really should never forget.

I point all the above facts out not only in memory of those lost, but also that we, as a people, may keep our eyes on the ball as we continue to combat this elusive enemy across the globe. For the self same Islamic fanatics, related to the Al-Qaeda network, were not only responsible for September 11, they are behind many of the American casualties we are currently experiencing in Iraq. They were behind the Madrid bombing and the most recent bombings in England. These people aren’t satisfied with military targets. They are after you and me and our children and our very way of life. We really cannot afford to forget.

Four years down the road, we’ve made a great deal of progress, but the London bombings should serve as a reminder that what began on September 11th is still far from over. Our enemy is still at the gates, more likely right amongst us. I encourage you to go back and review some of the quotes and images from that dreadful morning so that the nature of our enemy may remain in the forefront of your thought as you discuss war and civil liberties and prisoner treatment and troop reductions and all those other related issues which flood our current events.
… and never forget.