President Obama will be at New York City this morning to lay a wreath at Ground Zero, and it is meet that he do so. It has been nearly a decade since President Bush stood amid the still burning rubble and, with his arm draped around the shoulders of a fireman named Bob Beckwith, raised a bullhorn, and uttered his famous declaration, “I hear you, the rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”

So began the long manhunt that was wrapped in a war. It is hard to think of any combination quite like it in all of history. There are those who reckon Mr. Bush made more of it than was necessary, and that this is the moment to declare victory and end what is sometimes called the global war on terror. Our instinct is that the war will end when all the enemies who have appeared against us in this struggle are defeated, but there will be time — and our country has the institutions — to debate and reason out that question.

Mr. Obama’s visit today strikes us as a moment to reflect not on policy and divisiveness but on the remarkable unity that these attacks produced in our city and our country — the appreciation for all of our uniformed services, from the firefighters who rushed into the World Trade Center, while it was still afire, to the first responders who rushed to join the rescue and the cleanup, to the police officers who have kept watch so effectively in the years since the attacks, to the army and air force and naval forces, to the covert services, all of which were behind the unit of Navy Seals that slew our enemy at his own lair.

It has been reported that Mr. Obama invited President Bush to join him at Ground Zero today and that the 43^rd president demurred, saying he has preferred to avoid the spotlight in his post-presidential years. Certainly many will be thinking of him, even as they welcome Mr. Obama. Mr. Bush brought his nominating convention to New York in 2004 as part of his own gesture of admiration for the spirit of the city. “Here buildings fell,” he said. “Here a nation rose.”

Now new buildings are rising, as well, at Ground Zero, and even as our enemy lies at the bottom of the sea the evil for which he stood is losing its appeal, even in the Arab world whence he came, and a new spirit of democracy is spreading. No doubt that is part of what our enemies heard. Where it will take the Arab world is not yet clear, but it is clear where it started and which nations have demonstrated its superiority as a governing system. We prefer to think of it as part of the American triumph, and it will be good to mark that point with the president as he comes to share this moment with the city today.