In July of 1969 I was working for NBC News in New York. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had just landed on the moon. As I stepped out into the 7th floor corridor from my office, a man in a white space suit, visor down, emerged from the stairway at the far end of the hall and began walking in measured steps toward the commissary, which was near my office. As he passed, I could hear the now signature sound of his breathing inside the suit. I was struck then by the absurdity of the moment. 250,000 miles away, on the moon, two Americans were cavorting in moon dust and gathering scientific data. At the same time on earth an actor, who moments before had been replaying the saga for cameras in a studio one floor above my office, was now walking by me in search of grilled cheese sandwich. The technology of the time was less than adequate to convey the whole event in real-time pictures.

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, like most of you, I sat in front of the television, transfixed, watching those planes dive through the World Trade Center again and again. I had an eerie moment of clarity that took me back thirty-two years. I was wishing that this current event were some bizarre re-creation: a special effects display that would dissolve into a "talking head" of a filmmaker explaining how such realism was possible through the magic of twenty-first century digital image manipulation. This could not be the New York City I had lived in and loved for so long. These mammoth structures could not be crumbling. I felt as if I were witnessing a gigantic surreal piñata spilling out its contents of mothers, fathers, wives, husbands and brothers into the clear New York air.

The Pentagon before this terrible day had always seemed, to me, a bastion of invulnerability; a reassuring symbol of American might. It was, I am sure, a comfort to many beyond our own borders who had been helped -- even saved -- by the United States. That building was the center, the heart, of a willing colossus who would take on the bullies of the world in defense of freedom. Seeing it in shambles engendered much more than just a reaction of shock and horror.

Before September 11, 2001 we may have had different values but now they are all the same: the preservation of freedom. Before September 11, 2001 we were focused on our own lives but now we are focused on only one: the life of our republic. Before September 11, 2001 we were scattered to the four winds: but now we are resolved to ride the winds of war.

To those who lost their loved ones, rest assured, we will never forget; to those who caused them their loss, be afraid, we will never forget.

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