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25 years after 9/11, our children need us to remember with them

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Twenty-five years ago this week, I was a young journalism student sitting in class when America changed in a single morning.

I remember the shock, the confusion and then the clarity that followed. We watched our country come under attack, and we watched Americans come together in response.

Today, I am the mother of four daughters, and what strikes me most as we approach the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11 is how much our country has changed since that day, and how many of our children have no memory of the America that existed before it.

On Sept. 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four airplanes and murdered nearly 3,000 innocent people. They attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The passengers and crew of Flight 93 fought back, and their plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania before it could reach its intended target.

There was no TikTok algorithm to reinterpret what we had just witnessed. Americans watched it happen. And then something remarkable happened. We came together.

American flags appeared on homes, businesses and freeway overpasses. Democrats and Republicans stood together. Strangers hugged. First responders ran toward burning buildings while everyone else was running out. We understood that America was imperfect, but fundamentally worth defending. We understood that deliberately flying airplanes filled with innocent people into buildings filled with innocent people was evil. We knew who had attacked us. Al-Qaida, led by Osama bin Laden, had declared war on the United States. There was moral clarity about that fact.

I miss that clarity.........

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