Eight years ago today, the United States was subject to an act of terrorism, an act of war, and a mass murder all in one. We must not forget those who died because they were the direct targets of the attack, those who were merely considered expendable by the terrorists, those who bravely entered the towers to help the people trapped there, and those who brought down the last plane before it could reach its target.

We must not forget that a major contributing cause of the disaster was our inadequate response to earlier attacks. We must not forget that there are people in the world who are just plain evil. We must not indulge the conceit that an inadequate response to evil somehow makes us enlightened or moves us to a higher plane. Far from it. Failure to confront evil is not compassion; it is cruelty to those who are victimized in the future in crimes that could have been prevented.

We have gone eight years without another terrorist attack on the United States. This is an accomplishment of people who learned from the mistakes of the past. Let us not forget. Let us not repeat.