9/11 – The day that broke our hearts also revealed the strength of our nameless heroes.

Victor Sharpe

September 11, 2001, is etched within our collective memories, or should be for those of us who remember that day of loss, courage, and confusion, for now we again look at a world threatened by yet more anti-Western horror.

Each year, we pause to remember not just the outrage we felt as the planes flew into the Twin Towers, guided by their ruthless Muslim hi-jackers, but of all the lives lost to terror on and since that day.

For many, 9/11 remains personal. I remember, on what was planned by my wife and I to be a pleasant morning, that my brother woke us up. He told me to quickly turn on the television. It was still very early in our home here in the Pacific Northwest.  My elder brother was calling me from England where he was eight hours ahead of us in time, and his voice was unexpectedly very firm. I rose sleepily yet quickly turned on the TV, just in time to see a large plane crashing into the New York skyline and what we learned later was the second tower.

It was an ordinary day, but suddenly lives were being lost, and everything had changed in a single breath.

It is said that some days divide history into before and after. September 11 was one of those days.  In America and around much of the world we all watched our televisions in silence, cried in disbelief, and all aged in seconds.

I remember still what the great mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, later said.

“The attacks of September 11th were intended to break our spirit. Instead, we have emerged stronger.”

Hopefully, we as a nation and a people are stronger, but I fear many may not be as we now confront how in the upcoming New York mayoral race, the next mayor may well be the grinning ghoul, Mahmood Mamdani, a Communist and a practicing Muslim.

So, on 9/11, we woke up expecting normality and sure enough the heroes on that grim day were already climbing up through the inferno that was engulfing the Twin Towers. The day that broke our hearts, also revealed their strength.

To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” That day, the world stood still – and we stood together.

The world, as we know it here in America, was shaken. But in much of the Arab world, especially among the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians, there were shameful joyous celebrations.