Here is my #LIHerald.com editorial to mark the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center:
The Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pa., set off a cascade of worldwide catastrophes over the subsequent two decades — the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and many other terrorist attacks, in multiple countries. September 2001 seems like a lifetime ago, but for those old enough to remember that terrible year, it remains a haunting memory, a fever dream that we try to lock in the backs of our brains but is ever-present.
For those of us in Nassau County that day, we could only watch in horror as gray-black smoke plumes spiraled out of the twisted, shattered remains of the twin towers upward into an otherwise perfect azure sky. The plumes were visible from points across the county.
Shortly after the attacks, people started to gather on the beach in Lido and at the Norman J. Levy Park and Preserve in Merrick — the highest point on the South Shore — to watch the billowing smoke, staring silently in stunned disbelief.
The United States homeland was under attack for the first time since World War II, and at that moment, we had no idea who the invader was, or the future suffering in distant lands that the attacks would bring. It was all incomprehensibly terrifying.
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