PERSPECTIVE: Eight years after 9/11, we pause to reflect

» Our society still bears the scars of an attack that changed history, especially for local residents.

The eighth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, is today.

Especially here, so close to the Pentagon, where a plane plunged, the memory of that day is vivid.

Many in the Prince William, Manassas and Manassas Park areas were directly affected that day — they were there or they knew someone who was there.

For them, the memory of the day is more than a call to American defense, more than an attack against freedom; it is a personal trauma.

With each passing year that reveals no further terrorist attacks on our soil, we move our attention from fear for the homeland to action abroad.

In Iraq and Afghanistan we are waging multiyear wars that already are beginning to fade into the repetitious background of the news cycle.

We shouldn’t let them fade. And we must not let Sept. 11 fade.

If one were to go back in time to any day before that fateful Sept. 11 and tell an American that the World Trade Towers would be brought down by hijacked planes, that would be an incredible thought for him or her to swallow.

If you were to tell that past American that the day would change everything, he or she would hardly be able to imagine it.

But that past American has transformed into the modern one, and we all know what changes that day has wrought.

We must not forget the innocent men and women who died that day just because they were doing their jobs or taking a plane.

We cannot forget the families of those people.

And we cannot forget the terrorists who perpetrated those acts, because somewhere there are men and women, with hearts as black, ready to do the same thing if given an opportunity.

It has been eight years since Sept. 11, but we must continue to remember it as if it were yesterday.