Editorial: 9/11 - We mark another year
By World's Editorials Writers on Sep 11, 2013, at 2:27 AM Updated on 9/11/13 at 4:06 AM
Editorials
The 6,300 employees at the American Airlines Maintenance Facility in Tulsa could use some certainty, but they're going to have to wait.
The loss of 12 lives, 13 counting the suspect, in the Navy shipyard shootings Monday is tragic. With each killing spree the natural reaction is to search for the motive or the psychological reason for such a horrific event.
The date, Sept. 11, 2001, has become the point by which many Americans almost instinctively mark time. Watching a movie made in 1996, one thinks - and might even say aloud - that it was five years before the attack and remembers it as a more innocent time. A rerun of a sporting event from 2002 recalls what it was like only a year after the attack.
The worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, simply referred to as 9/11, left more than 3,000 people of all ethnicities and faiths, most of them U.S. citizens, dead.
Terrorists flying four hijacked jet airliners flew two of the planes into the twin World Trade Center towers and one into the front of the Pentagon. The terrorists in the fourth plane were overpowered by passengers, and the plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.
It was a day that placed the United States on a path toward two long wars and the search for those responsible. That search continues though many top leaders of al-Qaida, the terrorist group that planned the attack, have been jailed or killed. Al-Qaida's leader and primary financier, Osama bin Laden, was tracked down in Pakistan and killed by Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011.
Still, the United States remains on guard. The attack in April that left four dead and several wounded at the Boston Marathon reminds us that the threat is real.
Planned attacks have been less successful because of the strength of the response to 9/11, including a new spirit of cooperation among U.S. security agencies.
Yes, we all remember where we were that day. We gasped when we saw that an airliner had crashed into one of the towers. We stood in horror as we realized that another plane was headed toward the second tower. We were in shock when we saw the building erupt into a ball of fire.
Then came the reports of the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania.
Americans will never forget the tragedy of that day and the bravery of those who risked and forfeited their lives trying to save others.
Americans ought to never forget that the country and its people stood strong and recovered.
We mark another year. And we remember.
Original Print Headline: 9/11
Editorials
The 6,300 employees at the American Airlines Maintenance Facility in Tulsa could use some certainty, but they're going to have to wait.
The loss of 12 lives, 13 counting the suspect, in the Navy shipyard shootings Monday is tragic. With each killing spree the natural reaction is to search for the motive or the psychological reason for such a horrific event.
