13 years ago. Or yesterday. Hard to tell sometimes

It was 13 years ago today that terrorists launched a major, multi-pronged attack on U.S. soil, successfully hitting the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon with hijacked airliners, while passengers fighting back forced a fourth airliner to crash in a field in Pennsylvania, giving their lives to spare others. It is one of those events where everyone remembers where they were when it happened, and the images are still chilling:

For a while, all Americans seemed to realize that there are terrorists in the world and that we were their target. It only took repeated attacks over 22 years, starting with the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, for that realization to finally set in, but folks finally woke up.

Most folks aren't awake anymore, or at least they weren't until recent events in Iraq made it clear we remain a target. A lot of people, including the president, wanted to pretend that everything is hunky-fucking-dory and there is no cause for alarm out there, so let's all just go play golf, mmm-kay?

Yeah, that approach isn't working out. Time to wake up again, kids. "Never forget" means don't let it happen again.