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Two Years Later - We Remember Some comments worth thinking about as we remember the attack on our nation two years ago and the courage, strength, and resolve we as a people demonstrated in its aftermath. There was a glittering city, the greatest in the history of man, a place of wild creativity, of getting, grabbing and selling, of bustle and yearning and greed. It was brutally attacked by a band of primitives. The city reeled. We knew what to expect: The selfish, heartless city-dwellers would trample children in their path as they raced for safety, they'd fight for the lifeboats like the wealthy on the Titanic. It didn't happen. It wasn't that way at all. They were better than they knew! They saved each other--they ran to each other's aid, they died comforting strangers. Then the capital city was attacked, and there too goodness broke out. And sleeping boomers on planes came awake and charged the cockpit to keep the plane from hitting the home of the American president. And then the mighty nation hit back at the primitives, and hit again. Peggy Noonan, "Time to Put the Emotions Aside" Two beautiful fall seasons ago, this society was living in a fool's paradise while so far from being "in search of enemies" that its governing establishment barely knew how to tell an enemy from a friend. If there is anything to mark or commemorate, it is the day when that realm of illusion was dispelled-the date that will one day be acknowledged as the one on which our enemies made their most truly "suicidal" mistake. Christopher Hitchens, "Fewer flags, please, and more grit" There is a myth that though we love freedom, others don't; that our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture; that freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law are American values or Western values; that Afghan women were content under the lash of the Taliban; that Saddam was somehow beloved by his people; that Milosevic was Serbia's savior. Anywhere, any time ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police. UK Prime Minister Tony Blair to U.S. Congress, July 17, 2003 Area residents who lost their lives on September 11, 2003 Arcelia Castillo, 49, Elizabeth Carlos DaCosta, 44, Elizabeth Colleen Fraser, 51, Elizabeth Margaret Lewis, 49, Elizabeth Frankie Serrano, 23, Elizabeth Anthony Tempesta, 38, Elizabeth

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