Saying “We will never forget” while forgetting what can happen again

“Not that remorse did not oppose temptation;
A little she strove, and much repented,
And whispering ‘I will ne’er consent’—consented.”
— Lord George Gordon Byron, Don Juan

This is not a column about remembering September 11, 2001. Rather, it is about our collective pathology, which reached its nadir on September 11, 2026. More to the point, this column is about deliberately not remembering; it is about pretending that we have learned what we have not learned.

After a week of “never forgetting” that culminated in a delusional commemoration at Ground Zero, we have demonstrated that we have not remembered. Rather, we have spent 25 years inviting another 9-11. We have welcomed our next murderers, celebrated their presence, pandered to their extremism, elected them to public office, and apologized for their terrorist ideology.

It is not reasonable to wonder “if” it will happen again. The only reasonable question is “When?”

Perhaps it would be better to say that we have deliberately “misremembered.” Because whatever that was on September 11, 2026, in lower Manhattan, it was not an exercise in either purgative or remedial remembering. Rather, it was a disturbing exercise in attempting to deny what all honest, reasonable people know: We have given more comfort and succor to the friends, allies, and ideological heirs of the 9-11 terrorists than we have to their victims.

The ceremonies on September 11, 2026, were more an exercise in enablement than cautionary remembering. Like much else in American public life over the past 25 years, it was a massive exercise in attempted self-delusion.

Begin with the language used across legacy media. They tell us that “airplanes” flew into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, as though these tubes of metal had minds and wills of their own. The words “terrorist,” “Muslim,” and “Islamic” are barely ever mentioned. They certainly were not stated in any speeches or discussions in the Ground Zero ceremonies. Passive voice and mysterious self-flying airplanes are the lingua franca of our collective “remembering.”

Airplanes do not have moral agency. They do not fly themselves. The events of 9-11 were terrorist attacks committed by Muslim terrorists, using airplanes as their weapons. Our collective refusal to look that truth in the face will be the proximate cause of Islamic terrorist attacks on “small” scales to continue, and for a 9-11-scale of attack to happen again.

We have forgotten. We will be reminded. And the next time it may be exponentially larger than the one of 25 years ago. Cities, not buildings, will be destroyed. Or, rather, Islamic terrorists will destroy cities.

By no means am I suggesting that every person in the world who subscribes to some brand of Islam is a terrorist, or even a terrorist sympathizer. I have entertained Muslims in my home, and have found them to be friendly, congenial, and liberal in their attitudes toward others. And I’m willing to concede that the large majority of Muslims are similarly peaceful.

But it takes only a miniscule fraction of the Muslims in the world to inflict widespread terror. There are two billion Muslims in the world, comprising about a quarter of the earth’s population. If only one percent of that population is committed to murdering the infidel, that’s 20 million potential terrorists at large. And they are supported, encouraged, and abetted by far more Muslims, even of those who would not carry out the murders themselves.

Not only have we embraced the latter, but we have also elected them to public office—congresspersons from Minnesota and Michigan, for example. Allies, such as the governor of New York, don hijabs and grovel before them, hypocritically legitimizing the subjugation and violent oppression of women. And, of course, a Muslim terrorist sympathizer (married to a woman who has expressly endorsed terrorism) has been elected mayor of the very city in which the 9-11 Islamic terrorist attack occurred. This is the same mayor who apparently laughed with another terrorist sympathizer literally as the names of the victims of his comrade terrorists were being read on September 11, 2026.

Of course, I am not suggesting that it is inappropriate to commemorate the 9-11 victims through collective ceremonies of recollection. We must remember those who have perished, setting aside for that purpose why and how they were murdered. We must grieve and mourn the dead. But we do them no justice by lamenting their deaths on the one hand while we deny the causes of their murders on the other. Nor do we honor their memory by appeasing their murderers and their murderers’ supporters.

Nor am I suggesting that we should either take vengeance or use vengeful language about the terrorists. Hard as it may be, as Catholics our posture should always be one of reconciliation and forgiveness to those who have harmed us. But that is different from ignoring the terrorist ideology that goes by the name of “Islam,” as though the events of 9-11 were a kind of abstract misfortune, or minor point of disagreement. Or, worse, expressly welcoming terrorists and their sympathizers in the name of suicidal faux empathy.

Similarly, calls by politicians and pundits for “dialogue” are delusional. One cannot dialogue with ideology.

Islam—at least as interpreted by the terrorists and their millions of adherents—is inherently irrational and violent. There’s no possibility of dialogue with people who believe they have a divine mandate—nay, command—to inflict terror on those who do not subscribe to the ideology. There are no points of agreement. Nor are there any rational foundations by which assertions can be judged to be found correct or wanting.

The Muslim ideology behind 9-11 and the thousands of terrorist murders in the 25 years since is not open to any sort of rational dialogue. Indeed, the rejection of reason is a staple of the ideology. They want to kill us. Full stop.

Of course, these are harsh and hard judgments. I know that. But if we shy from calling Islamic terror by its name, we invite Muslim terrorists, along with their financial, political, and spiritual supporters, to continue their murderous campaigns in both small and large measures. I began this column by suggesting that we have voluntarily forgotten the real cause of 9-11.

As I close, I must observe that it is worse than that. We have voluntarily consented to another 9-11. And another. And another. And so on until we have the moral courage and political will to recognize that Islam is a threat to world peace. Whispering “We will never consent”, we are consenting to our own destruction.

Read original article