There are certain moments in history that divide time into before and after. September 11, 2001, was one of them.
I remember exactly where I was.
I was working as a supply chain manager at a manufacturing facility. Our IT department had nearly every computer browser locked down so that employees could access only the company intranet—the internal network. That probably sounds foreign to younger people who have never known life without smartphones and instant access to news from anywhere in the world. But we had no smartphones. We had no television in the facility. And only one person in the entire building had access to the outside internet.
When word began to spread that something terrible was happening, we crowded around that one man’s computer and tried to understand what we were seeing.
We watched the news through that small window to the outside world as the horror unfolded. We saw smoke pouring from the World Trade Center. We watched people running for their lives. We learned that other planes had been hijacked. We saw human beings dying in front of our eyes because terrorists had deliberately chosen to murder them.
We were not sent home. We were allowed to call our families, but we stayed at the facility, unsure of what was happening beyond its walls or what might happen next. It was just my wife, Shawna, and me at that point in our lives, and I remember how concerned we were about the future. Like millions of Americans, we suddenly understood that our country had changed.
We Should Be Honest About What Happened
September 11 was not simply a tragedy. It was not an accident, a natural disaster, or a vague act of “hate.” It was a planned and deliberate terrorist attack carried out by Islamic extremists.
The men who committed it acted in the name of jihad and believed they were following their understanding of the Quran and the teachings and example of Muhammad. Their target was not only a collection of buildings. It was America—our people, our freedom, our influence, and our way of life.
That truth should not be softened, obscured, or rewritten to make it more comfortable. We cannot learn from history if we refuse to describe it honestly.
At the same time, honesty requires precision. Condemning the ideology that motivated the attackers is not the same as declaring every Muslim personally responsible for their crimes. But neither should the existence of peaceful Muslim neighbors be used to silence legitimate questions about the beliefs taught by radical Islam, the hostility toward America that exists in parts of the Muslim world, or whether every ideology is equally compatible with the freedoms, values, and religious heritage that have shaped this nation.
There were people in other countries who celebrated as Americans died. That is difficult to remember, but it is part of what Americans witnessed. It should warn us against a shallow version of tolerance that pretends all deeply held beliefs lead to the same kind of society. They do not. A free people should be compassionate, but we should not become naive about ideologies that would destroy the very tolerance and freedom extended to them.
I Will Not Forget the Cost
I will never forget the innocent people who went to work, boarded an airplane, or began an ordinary Tuesday morning and never came home.
I will never forget the families whose lives were permanently changed.
I will never forget the first responders who ran toward the danger while everyone else was trying to escape—many of whom sacrificed their lives trying to save people they had never met.
And I will not forget the members of our military who left their families in the years that followed to fight the terrorists who wanted to strike us again. Some returned home carrying wounds that could be seen. Others carried wounds no one else could see. Some never returned at all.
In the aftermath of the attack, I seriously considered joining the military. Ultimately, I chose not to. Even now, part of me sometimes wishes I had.
We Held Our Families, and One Another, Closer
The days after September 11 were filled with grief, fear, and uncertainty. But they also revealed something remarkable about the American people.
Families held one another more closely. People from across the country poured out support for New York and the families affected by the attacks. Flags appeared everywhere. Political and cultural differences that had seemed so important only days earlier became smaller. For a time, we remembered that we belonged to one another and that there were things worth defending together.
There was a unity and resolve that is difficult to describe to anyone who did not experience it. America had been attacked, and Americans responded as Americans.
Many people also turned back to God. Churches filled. People prayed openly. We acknowledged our fear, our dependence, and our need for something greater than ourselves. We asked God to comfort the grieving, strengthen our nation, bring justice, and remind us that evil would not have the final word.
It is heartbreaking to see how much of that unity, national devotion, and dependence on God has faded. We have again become deeply divided, often treating fellow Americans as enemies while forgetting that real enemies exist. We have grown more confident in ourselves and less willing to acknowledge God. I cannot help but believe that the further we drift from Him, the more vulnerable we become—not only to dangers from outside our country, but to decay from within it.
The Next Generation Needs to Know
My concern is that many younger Americans know September 11 only as a chapter in a history book, if they know much about it at all. They did not feel the uncertainty of that morning. They did not watch the towers fall in real time. They did not wonder whether another plane was coming or whether someone they loved was safe.
They deserve to know more than the date and the number of people killed. They need to understand what motivated the attack, what was targeted, what it cost, and why the freedoms they inherited must be protected.
They also need wisdom—the ability to treat individual people with dignity without pretending that every ideology is harmless, every culture values the same things, or every enemy can be persuaded to share our ideals. Compassion and discernment are not opposites. Neither are love and truth.
Twenty-five years later, I still remember crowding around that computer, staring at images I could hardly comprehend. I remember calling home. I remember the fear, the grief, the anger, the prayers, and the extraordinary unity that followed.
I pray we never experience another day like September 11, 2001.
But I also pray we recover some of what we found in its aftermath: gratitude for our families, courage in the face of evil, unity as Americans, devotion to the country we have been given, and humble dependence on God.
May we tell the truth about what happened.
May we honor those who were lost and those who sacrificed.
And may we never forget.
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