The morning was cool and clear; much like it is this morning. I had just gotten to the office and was preparing my mug for that first deluge of coffee when the newsflash came over the TV.

    “We’ve got a report that an airplane has flown into one of the World Trade Center Towers on lower Manhattan,” the voice was saying. This was followed by the eerie visual image of black smoke pouring from the upper floors of the shiny tower.

   “Somebody wasn’t paying attention,” was my immediate thought, never conceiving that someone would actually fly into a building on purpose.

   Then, as I watched the continuing report with others who had started gathering around the TV with me, we all saw the other Boeing 767 coming in low and fast – slamming into the other World Trade Center tower.

   I don’t claim to be an expert on international terrorism, or anything close to it; but, my immediate reaction, before the fireball dissipated was, “This is Osama bin Laden making good on his word.”

   My thoughts then turned to my younger brother, who frequently travels to the East Coast for business. Was he traveling THAT day? Was he on one of THOSE planes? The answer was no, but it would take me until well after noon to be able to find that out.

   Like every other American, the images and sounds of that day seven years ago remain as fresh in my mind as if they occurred yesterday and not 2,555 days ago. It strikes me that while so much has been changed by the events of that day; and, it saddens me about how much has really remained the same.

   The strident concern over the safety of this country’s citizens and the resolute determination to ensure that we would never … NEVER … allow ourselves to be subjected to that kind of horror again has waned. Instead, many of our compatriots have started to slide back into the complacency that led to our vulnerability of that day. We’ve begun to let our petty, temporal trials and tribulations; thinking they are all that matter. We’re again losing sight of this third rock from the Sun is really a very dangerous place on which human being try to live and survive; that there are some very nasty characters scheming and plotting and planning to do us – all of us, grievous harm.

   Some are more concerned about some nameless and faceless bureaucrat happening across their telephone number in a mass scan of international calls looking for those made to known numbers associated with terrorists and their supporters. Others are more desirous of affording the protections of the U.S. Constitution to terrorists captured and detained outside the jurisdiction of the United States than apparently protecting the citizens that actually live under that document. Still others want to blame this country for the monstrous acts of others, as if our government is the cause of all evil in the world.

   Yes, it seems many have not learned the lessons of September 11, 2001, or have chosen to willfully ignore them for their own political reasons.

   In my opinion, this is why this election cycle is so important. We, as Americans, are at a juncture where the policies put in place over the past seven years will be maintained, and strengthened where necessary; or, we return to the failed policies of capitulating to the “peace-at-all-cost” and “as-long-as-I-don’t-have-to-pay-a-price” crowd that led to nearly 3,000 of our compatriots’ untimely and unfortunate deaths on this day seven years ago.