Forgetting 9/11 invites the next attack on the American shield
By Grant Colby · Reporting from Amarillo ·
Twenty-five years is a long time in politics, but it’s a heartbeat in the life of a nation.
# The Price of Forgetting
Nearly 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001. According to France 24 and the Las Cruces Sun-News, the raw memory of that day is fading. For those who lived it, 9/11 was not a lesson in a history book; it was a rupture in the world. We are not merely healing; we are forgetting the price of weakness.
Trauma Binds a Nation
A fixed point in time can bind a country. My father’s generation had the assassination of John F. Kennedy. That event stunned the public and redefined the American psyche. 9/11 functioned the same way.
I remember the tense flight lines and the sudden, eerie silence of the skies. According to the Las Cruces Sun-News, Hal Hinton, a pilot, felt the panic of not knowing where his wife was. Felicia Rios held her newborn son in a New Mexico hospital and wondered what kind of world she had brought him into. This was not shared grief; it was the moment we realized the American shield had a hole in it. A similar collapse shook the public's trust during the 2008 financial crisis, when foreclosed homes and empty bank accounts called our stability into question. But 9/11 was a sacrifice that demanded absolute strength.
Why do we forget?
A gap now opens between those who saw the smoke and those who read the textbook. WCMU Public Media reports on Gen Z students like Laney Harsh, who learned the date from a book rather than experience. Harsh said her generation feels detached and even jokes about the attacks.
Some argue this distance shows progress. They claim we have moved past the slurs and cold stares described by Sada Jewels Hussein, who said she faced prejudice because of her name. These critics want to pivot the conversation toward polite society and inclusivity. That is a fine goal for a sociology seminar, but it is a dangerous gamble for a superpower.
Deterrence rests on the memory of pain and a determined will to ensure it never happens again. When a generation views a terrorist attack as a chapter in a book, they lose the instinct for vigilance. Russian tanks rolled into Georgia in 2008, reminding the world that aggression does not vanish just because we stop feeling the trauma of the past. If we treat 9/11 as a closed case of humanity coming together, we ignore the enemy waiting in the brush.
Strength Over Ceremony
President Donald Trump chose to pay his respects at the Pentagon rather than New York. This right focus emphasizes the command center. More than 120 people died there in a breach of our most sacred fortress. Strength maintains peace, not ceremonies.
Pat Werner, of the Silent Generation, warned that history repeats itself. We saw the crushing weight of the ocean in the Indian Ocean tsunami and the invisible threat of the swine flu outbreak. But those were acts of God. 9/11 was an act of man.
If we allow the memory of 9/11 to fade into a distant grief, we invite the next attack. A nation that forgets why it was terrified forgets how to be feared. We must stop treating this anniversary as a moment for healing and start treating it as a warning. The only way to honor the fallen is to remain the most formidable force on the planet.