TODAY – AT 11:46 A.M. ET:  Today is the 17th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks.  Americans are still commemorating the day.

But do they actually remember?  Consider the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941.  That date became symbolic for an entire generation.  But think ahead 17 years from that day.  It would have been 1958.  World War II was long over, and we had actually fought another war, in Korea, in the interim.   Pearl Harbor was still commemorated in 1958, as it is today.  But, over time, the impact, sadly, fades.

But still, it is good to have commemorations, if only to teach the young that something very important happened on this day.  From AP: 

NEW YORK (AP) — Americans were commemorating 9/11 with somber tributes, volunteer projects and a new monument to victims Tuesday, after a year when two attacks demonstrated the enduring threat of terrorism in the nation's biggest city.

Margie Miller was among the thousands of 9/11 victims' relatives, survivors, rescuers and others who gathered on a misty Tuesday morning at the memorial plaza where the World Trade Center's twin towers once stood. She came to the site from her home in suburban Baldwin, as she does 10 or so times a year, to remember her husband, Joel Miller. Only a few fragments of his remains were recovered.

"To me, he is here. This is my holy place," his widow said before the ceremony began a moment of silence and tolling bells at 8:46 a.m., the time when the trade center was hit by the first of two terrorist-piloted planes. Victims' relatives who had brought signs bearing photos of their loved ones wordlessly held them high.

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence headed to the two other places where hijacked planes crashed on Sept. 11, 2001, in the deadliest terror attack on American soil.

The president and first lady Melania Trump flew to Pennsylvania to join an observance at the Sept. 11 memorial in a field near Shanksville, where a new "Tower of Voices" was dedicated Saturday. Pence is attending a ceremony at the Pentagon. Trump, a Republican and native New Yorker, took the occasion of last year's anniversary to issue a stern warning to extremists that "America cannot be intimidated."

Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks on 9/11, when international terrorism hit home in a way it previously hadn't for many Americans. Sept. 11 still shapes American policy, politics and everyday experiences in places from airports to office buildings, even if it's less of a constant presence in the public consciousness after 17 years.

A stark reminder came not long after last year's anniversary: A truck mowed down people, killing eight, on a bike path within a few blocks of the World Trade Center on Halloween.

COMMENT:  Terrorism is a method.  We have not yet "won" the war on terror, but we really don't know how many terror attacks have been prevented.  The terror groups know that they are constantly being confronted, and will be more vigorously confronted by this president than by the last one, who wanted to call terror attacks "man-made disasters."

September 11,  2018