Five years ago marked a turning point for our country.  With the attacks in New York, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania, terror was brought to our shores on a scale the likes of which we had never before seen.  Unfortunately, it also represents a significant victory for those who would destroy our nation.  In response to their horrendous act of cowardice and destruction, we willingly set aside our freedoms and our moral fortitude in the hopes such sacrifices would bring us more security.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.  All we have accomplished since that terrible day is the loss of who we are as Americans.  We once stood proud as a beacon of hope and humanity for the rest of the world.  Now, we have sacrificed all that made us great and have gained nothing in return.  We are not safer, but we are no longer as free as we once were.  We are less secure in our homes and personal affairs, yet the threat of terrorism against us is as high and probable as it was five years ago.  We have alienated the rest of the world with our bullying and dishonesty and betrayal of all that our nation once stood for, and yet those responsible for the catalyst of these changes still roam free while planning and plotting against us.

I still weep when I think about that day, when I think about watching in disbelief as the events unfolded right there on national television, when I think about relaying information to Jenny via telephone as she and others sat at their office and wondered how a simple Tuesday morning could have unraveled in such an unexpected and ghastly manner.  3,000 lives were lost that day.  Their sacrifice at the hands of terrorists should never have resulted in changing our way of life and casting aside all that we stood for, yet that is precisely what happened.  It offends me to think how all those who died have been used to explain away actions we should never consider but now practice as a matter of normalcy.  It is as though we are spitting on their collective graves, standing atop their bodies and proclaiming they are proof that we should sacrifice so much of who we are.

The mantra of hawks is that everything changed on 9/11.

I refute that statement as hogwash and an offense to our Founding Fathers and the very cornerstones of American civilization: liberty, human rights, and superior morality.  Sadly, we have sacrificed all three because those who claim the attacks changed the world have remained in power and were able to make their own predictions come true.

We needn’t have sacrificed so much of who we are on the altar of safety.  To do so is to hand the terrorists one of the very things they want: to destroy our way of life.  They didn’t have to win five years ago.  They shouldn’t have won.  As history will eventually say, we helped them win.  We gave them what they wanted and handed it to them on a silver platter.

As you consider the state of the world and the state of America now half a decade removed from that catastrophe, consider also what has been lost by our own hands in response.  The lives of many Americans, most of them military personnel, have been forfeited.  Our most sacred US Constitution has been violated and trampled with promises of security at the expense of all that document provides to us.  Our nation’s position as the voice of human rights is now muffled by the sounds of torture, echoes from voices long since remanded to secret prisons, and cries from those permanently incarcerated without hope for trial.  The global political capital and general compassion we earned with those 3,000 lives was wastefully spent on lies in order to act out of angry revenge against a sovereign nation that was wholly and completely uninvolved in the attacks against us.  Our men and women in uniform have been placed in harm’s way sans any form of planning for victory, not to mention without a just cause in the invasion of Iraq.

Did everything change on 9/11?  Yes, but it didn’t have to.

Remember the lives lost.  Remember the tragedy of that day.  Remember the tears you shed as you watched the unthinkable happen right here within our borders.  Remember who we were before it happened, and consider who we have become since then.  Remember what liberty tasted like, what freedom meant, and what you have given up.  Remember what it once meant to be an American.  Remember when dissent was part of our democracy.  Remember what it was like to see freedom of the press in action.  Remember when everything you did was not monitored and recorded.  Remember the country in which those 3,000 lives were lost, because this is no longer that country.  Remember how safe you were on September 10, 2001, and ask yourself if you are indeed safer now, especially knowing how much of your American liberties and rights have been taken away.  Remember when the greatest threats came from outside our nation.

Whatever you do, use today to remember.