Eight years hence

It doesn't seem like eight years have gone by since that Tuesday in September. In a single morning, over three thousand people lost their lives; citizens from 91 nations were killed. It was truly an attack of a global scale on the center of world trade and finances, as well as elsewhere; a small field in Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon...the most overlooked of the target sites, but still where more people died than during the Oklahoma City Bombing.

http://www.september11news.com/AAAWorldCasualtiesMap.gif In case one would need a map to give scope to how global the attack was; Saudi Arabia is notably absent from being colored in, as the hijackers are not counted amongst the dead.

Eight years ago, a terrible event occurred that has left lasting scars upon not only the American people, but the world. However, eight years ago, for a few brief weeks, the world stood united in one voice to decry the horrors of which it had been subjected to. When I think about it eight years later, my first thought is not of collapsing buildings or aircraft; rather it is of the still photographs of the people who were jumping from the World Trade Center, thinking it was preferable to the death that awaited them inside.

And eight years hence, we are still in Afghanistan. Eight years hence we have still not captured Osama Bin Laden. Eight years hence, we are still faced with a gaping hole in Manhattan. Eight years hence, we are once again bickering and divided. May God both forgive us and bless us, for all that we have done and failed to do, for all we have endured and will continue to in the years ahead.