Have we forgotten 9/11?

   Have we forgotten 9/11? That question occurred to me last night when I suddenly realized that the somber anniversary had sneaked up on me and I had barely given it a thought. That used to never happen. In the years immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington D.C.,  it was an easy anniversary to remember. With the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan and the start of the Iraq War in 2003, it was on everyone's mind pretty much all the time. Now, most of the troops have come home. We haven't seen anything like 9/11 since that awful Tuesday morning. Osama bin Laden, the fanatical mastermind behind the attacks, has been dead since 2011. Is it any wonder, then, that most Americans have moved on?
   In some ways, our ability to move on from the 9/11 attacks is a positive sign of healing. It shows that we are a resilient people. But in some ways, it also is disturbing. We talk every year about how we should never forget 9/11 and those who died. We talk about how we should always remember the lessons we learned during that awful time. Then, when the anniversary is over, we blithely go on with our lives, never giving it a second thought until the next anniversary rolls around.
   We must do better than that. We owe it to the victims, and we owe it to future generations, never to forget the lessons we learned that day. And what were those lessons?
   First, that America is not an island, isolated and whole unto itself. We are not immune to the terrorist attacks that plague other parts of the world. It can happen here. It did happen here. And it could happen again.
   When I was growing up, I remember hearing about the wars and the tragedies that afflicted other parts of the world. Those "other places" seemed so distant to me. I felt safe, certain that such things could never happen here. After all, we were America, the most powerful nation in the world. No one would dare attack us, or so I thought. Unfortunately, that was a delusion shared by most Americans of my and earlier generations. It was that delusion, that sense of invulnerability, that innocence, that died that day. We cannot afford to ever be that innocent again.
   Second, we learned that our actions on the world stage do have consequences. On Monday, I sat for an hour or two and watched the rebroadcast of the "Today" show that aired on Sept. 11, 2001. Several times during that broadcast, we were reminded that America was widely hated in the Middle East at that time because of our unwavering support of Israel. It was suggested by the show's hosts that this might have been a motive for the attacks.
   As a loyal American, it's hard to hear that not everyone in the world is our friend. We like to think of ourselves as the world's police force, the "white knights," always ready to ride to the rescue of those in need. Above all, we see ourselves as "the good guys." The 9/11 attacks proved that not everyone  in the world see us that way. It also proved that our actions don't take place in a vacuum. Our foreign policy -- indeed every decision we make -- has very real consequences, both for Americans and for those in far-flung countries.
   Finally, the 9/11 attacks showed us the importance of safeguarding our freedoms. It showed us that, we, too, have a dark side, that when threatened, we are capable of doing some awful things.
   In the days immediately following the attacks, we were a nation in shock. We were angry and we were scared. It was that fear that caused us to condone the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, which gave our government unprecedented power. It was that fear which allowed us to look the other way while our government held hundreds of prisoners indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, engaged in torture in order to gain information, and even wiretap its own citizens.
   In some ways, the 9/11 attacks brought us together as only a national tragedy can. For a short while, at least, partisan divisions were forgotten and we all were just Americans. In some ways, it brought out the worst in us
   We have survived the dark times, and today, 13 years after the worst terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil, we are once again thriving. I can only hope that as the memory of those attacks continues to fade into the mists of history. we won't forget the lessons that thousands of innocent Americans died to teach us. If we simply go on, if we allow those lessons to be forgotten, then the blood of those innocents will have been spilled in vain. That can never be allowed to happen.