Pearl Harbor and 9/11 both woke America from the idea that we were safely apart from the world. A 9 year old in 1976 knew that automatically. A 9 year old in 2026 does not inherit that memory automatically.
In the modern era, for America, there are two truly defining single-day events: December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001. All of us older than perhaps five remember where we were, what we were doing, and what we felt and saw on those days. Different generations, sixty years apart. But Pearl Harbor changed the world the way 9/11 did. An America that believed it was isolated from the rest of the world, able to live in peace even while the rest of the world had serious problems, was woken from that slumber to the reality outside our borders. Twice.
I remember where my family was. My sister-in-law, Raini, was a graduate student at NYU, about six blocks from the towers. Her husband, Jonathon, was across the river at Rutgers. They were both in school, one in dental school, one in law school. We could reach Jonathon. We could not reach her. He could not reach her either. For about twelve hours nobody in the family knew if she was alive. She walked north most of the day until she found a payphone and called him. Jonathon called the rest of the family to let us know she was alive, then went to get her.
When I was a kid in the 1970s, we still remembered Pearl Harbor and World War II. 1976 was only thirty-five years after Pearl Harbor, and it was still a big deal. Pearl Harbor was discussed and taught in school, on television, and generally in society. Both of my grandfathers fought in World War II, one a medic in the Pacific, the other a bomber pilot in Europe. My uncles and dad fought in Korea and Vietnam. We knew the enemy. Imperial Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor. Nazi Germany was the other half of the Axis. The names were specific. The ideology was named.
Now, if you are a 9-year-old kid in 2026, nobody talks about 9/11 with any precision. Not at school. Barely on television. Nineteen hijackers from al-Qaeda murdered nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. They did it in the name of a jihadist ideology that openly seeks the death of Americans and the destruction of the West.
That movement did not end on September 12, 2001. Al-Qaeda, the Taliban … who rule Afghanistan … ISIS, Hamas, the Islamic Republic of Iran and her proxies, and the networks that share their aims and belief in apocalyptic Islam have continued to kill, recruit, and wait. Afghanistan is not the same thing as the Afghans, any more than the Islamic Republic and the IRGC are the same thing as the Persian people. But those regimes are inspired by an apocalyptic and tribal ideology that drives them to kill and conquer those they term infidels, unbelievers, not of Islam.
December 7 and September 11 were both surprise attacks in undeclared wars. Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor without a functioning declaration arriving first. Al-Qaeda attacked New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania the same way: no warning a nation could act on, no battlefield, no distinction between soldier and civilian. Imperial Japan killed 2,403 Americans at Pearl Harbor. Al-Qaeda killed 2,977 Americans in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. Different tools. Same intent: to change and defeat America.
The call is simple. Remember who did it. Stand guard. Stay vigilant. Protect America, the idea and the nation. Our forebears did that after Pearl Harbor. They named the enemy, stayed awake, and refused to treat a surprise attack as a one-day tragedy. We must not allow those enemies to kill us, or change us. We must stand as firm and hard as our forebears did in WW2.
There is no other place like this one. We owe it to the dead of both days, and to the generations since the Founding, to keep the country dedicated to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.