9/11: A time to mark the day everything changed

Editorial by Fayetteville Observer, September 11, 2013.

There will be speeches, music, a wreath-laying and a 21-gun salute at Fort Bragg's Main Post Flag Pole this morning. The sorrowful notes of taps, though, will say it all.

This is the 12th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York's Twin Towers and on the Pentagon. Twelfth anniversaries don't often get such attention. This one will.

What happened to this nation on Sept. 11, 2001, is seared into the minds and hearts of Americans, a wound nearly as fresh as the day it was inflicted.

That's especially so in this town, which has sent its soldiers off to war ever since that horrific morning, and all too often trying to mend their shattered bodies and minds when they return.

While Fort Bragg salutes the living and dead on this 12th anniversary of the atrocity we call 9/11, others will launch observances as well. Church bells will ring downtown at the time of the attacks on the towers. The Fayetteville VA Medical Center will host a 9/11 National Day of Service & Remembrance. The Student Government Association at Fayetteville Technical Community College will hold a memorial. A first-responders ceremony at the Airborne & Special Operations Museum will salute the men and women who died in the towers' collapse.

And there will be more. Much more.

Anyone who was at least 8 or 10 years old in 2001 will mark the day, recalling those dreadful images we watched on live TV of commercial airliners piercing landmark skyscrapers. The memory will not be erased.

We will remember, too, the thousands of American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who died in pursuit of an enemy who wears no uniform and swears allegiance to no country.

This is a new war, unprecedented in American history, fought against adherents of a savage philosophy, a twisted version of the world's second-largest religion. These terrorists' sacrament is not love but the slaughter of unbelievers, killing them wholesale and indiscriminately. We fought them in Iraq and we still fight them in Afghanistan, but the struggle is global. It will not end anytime soon.

So as we mark this 12th observance of the worst attacks ever on American soil, we salute all who have given their efforts, and even their lives - from the first wave who responded to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, to those who remain out there, in Afghanistan and in dozens of other countries around the world.

Thank you. Bless you.