Remembering 9/11

It's been ten years since a group of terrorists destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center, crashed a plane in the Pentagon, and attempted to fly a plane into the Capitol. If it weren't for the heroes aboard the plane who stormed the cockpit of the plane headed to the Capitol, they might have succeeded. They gave their lives to save many others.

At the end of September 11, 2001, almost 3000 people were dead. I remember seeing the paper notes posted on walls of people searching for the loved ones. You knew those notes would not be answered. They were gone. I cried when I saw others ask reporters for news about their missing. I knew the answer was not going to be a happy ending. And to this day, those events burn in my memory.

I was going to write that because of the Iraq War, maybe the terrorists won. After all we spent billions of dollars and lost thousands of brave American soldiers. For what? There were no weapons of mass destruction. Maybe the terrorists would bankrupt the United States.

But there was one thing that the terrorists forgot. The resiliency of the United States. We are who we are because of freedom. In this country, we have the right to speak, to move freely and to choose our government. As long as we honor and protect those freedoms, the terrorists will never win.