5 Years Later, Forgotten Lessons

On Sunday, the day before the fifth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center, the Twin Towers Alliance (www.twintowersalliance.com) is holding a rally at Central Park’s Naumberg bandshell at 4 p.m. Although the organization is waging what some may see as a hopeless battle, I completely support its position that unless the twin towers rise again, the terrorists will have won.Had a rally been held in the months after September 11, 2001, the response would have been enormous, because Americans were then united. We understood that we would be waging a difficult war against terrorists and their sponsors, and that all of us were targets.Those who show up on Sunday will be the ones who still remember that.It is our nation’s dissonance that has prolonged our presence in Iraq — it has encouraged the Islamic jihadists to battle on and recruit others. That polarization can be traced to the deliberate amnesia regarding what transpired on that Tuesday morning five years ago. I, for one, will never forget that day.The telephone rang. It was my son, Evan, calling me from Manhattan.”Are you watching TV?” he asked. “A plane just flew into the World Trade Center,” he said, and before I could turn on the set, he gasped, “Oh my God, another one just hit the other tower.”The news anchors soon announced that the Pentagon had also been attacked and that another hijacked plane might be headed toward the Capitol. The worst was yet to come.As I later watched the first tower crumble in a cloud of dust, I felt an indescribable sorrow for my country. I started singing “God Bless America” when the second tower collapsed. There could be no mistake: We were at war and our enemies were fanatical maniacs.Three days later, in the National Cathedral, a choir sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the hymn born during the Civil War. At the opening lines, “Mine eyes have seen the coming of the glory of our Lord,” the camera passed over those present — presidents, statesmen, and survivors wiping the tears from their eyes.President Bush said, “Just three days removed from these events, Americans do not have the distance of history, but our responsibility to history is clear.”“That responsibility,” he continued, is “to answer these attacks, and rid the world of evil.” We all nodded in agreement because we here in New York knew what evil looked like up close. It was a devil’s face in the black clouds rising from the burning towers. It was pure evil that drove the doomed workers to leap from them, some holding hands on their way to eternity.Remember September 21, Bette Midler singing “The Wind Beneath My Wings” at Yankee Stadium? Remember the camera shots of the mourners for the World Trade Center missing openly grieving as she sang? I remember seeing Governor Pataki wiping the tears from his eyes, Mayor Giuliani hanging his head as if in prayer. President Clinton and Senator Clinton sat stoically in their seats, and I was mystified by their reserve.If we understood then what we were fighting, why don’t we know it now? Because we have adversaries among us.Michael Moore; Bill Maher; Moveon.org; Hollywood stars; Howard Dean, and journalists in the mainstream press broke our solidarity and replaced our resolve with trepidation and doubt. They changed the enemy’s name to Bush and foolishly divided a nation, and while they all had a perfect right to express their opinion, I have no doubt that their vehemence came from arrogance, ignorance, and resentment over a lost election.To them I say: Vice President Gore chose to recount the votes only in Democratic counties, not the entire state. This demonstrated a pettiness and lack of integrity that made him ill-suited for the nation’s highest elected office.Nevertheless, the lies from his supporters in the party and the press did their job well. They put words into Mr. Bush’s mouth that were never said. They still insist that we should not have gone to Iraq, even though our goal was to end terrorism and get rid of those who sponsored it.Saddam was one of the biggest supporters of terror. Abdul Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi native who mixed the chemicals for the 1993 World Trade Center attack, moved back to Iraq after the bombing and actually was paid by Saddam, who was also paying $25,000 to families of suicide bombers. Our goal was to end all terrorism. Where did these loons think Al Qaeda would run after we hit Afghanistan?The “quagmire” is not in Iraq but in the minds of those in denial about what happened five years ago. It’s time to rebuild our towers and renew our resolve, or we’ll soon have new anniversaries to mourn our dead.

5 Years Later, Forgotten Lessons

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