The Anniversary: If I could choose to have one idea spread today, it is this:

War. Two years ago, what we call 9/11, was the Battle of New York; it was the Battle of Washington; the Battle of Shanksville. We lost the first two battles that day, in New York and Washington, because we were caught sleeping. By the time the third battle was fought, in the skies over rural Pennsylvania, we had stirred. Though there were no survivors in Shanksville, it was a decisive American victory, the first of the war, the first counterattack.

Stephen Ambrose, in his book on D-Day, relates the landing of Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. at Utah Beach in 1944. Realizing that his landing was swept off target by strong currents, and that both time and lives would be wasted attempting to track back nearly a half-mile to the target, Roosevelt told his 4th Infantry Division, "We'll begin the war from here." And so we did.