This month’s nods to the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, had barely faded from the news when three fresh developments jarred those among us who no longer have the possibility of terror attacks top of mind.
* Last weekend, the White House confirmed that Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza had been “killed in a United States counterterrorism operation in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region.” Hamza bin Laden had threatened al-Qaida’s revenge for his father’s death, and in a 2017 video urged lone-wolf attacks against Jews, Americans, other Westerners and Russians.
* On Thursday, a federal grand jury indicted a former American Airlines mechanic for allegedly attempting to sabotage an airliner by effectively disabling a component that helps pilots gauge the aircraft’s airspeed and pitch. Pilots detected a problem and aborted takeoff of a July flight from Miami to the Bahamas with 150 people on board. On Friday, the mechanic, who prosecutors say may have ties to Islamic State, pleaded not guilty.
* Late Thursday came a Tribune report that evoked echoes of many previous terror cases: A New Jersey man who had been trained in bomb-making and intelligence gathering and who allegedly spent years scouting landmarks as potential terrorism targets had been charged by federal authorities with terror offenses. Among dozens of “hot spots” the defendant allegedly scouted in Boston, New York and Washington: Fenway Park, the Statue of Liberty, U.N. headquarters, the George Washington Bridge, the Empire State Building, the White House and the Washington Monument.
We cite these incidents neither to alarm nor to interject them into policy disputes — on the proper U.S. response to Iran-sponsored terror, or a troop drawdown in Afghanistan, or the importance of national security issues in this nation’s presidential campaign.
Each of these new developments, though, is a reminder that for the foreseeable future, Americans cannot retreat into a holiday from history like the carefree dozen years from the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11.
Perpetual crisis shouldn’t be this nation’s condition. But vigilance and resolve should. Osama bin Laden gambled that we as a people are too unwilling to suffer combat casualties and too irresolute to mount a sustained retaliation to his terror campaign. Thus far, that’s been a bad wager, as his now-deceased son could attest.
History doesn’t knock. It bursts in, unannounced. Think back to 2001: One day Americans thought they were invulnerable; the next day men armed with box cutters and ailerons were murdering them by the thousands.
The practical requirements on all of us Americans: first that we give our appreciation (and adequate funding) to the men and women who work to keep global terror groups at bay; second that we abide by the mundane but crucial If you see something, say something.
Because in addition to Sept. 11, there’s another date from 2001 we should commemorate: Sept. 10. May that be the last gasp of Americans’ denial that in addition to the mass killers who commit domestic terror, other schemers who see the world as their battlefield would love to see us all dead.
Editorials reflect the opinion of the Editorial Board, as determined by the members of the board, the editorial page editor and the publisher.
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