Remembering 9/11

18 years ago today, our nation was forever changed. We will #NeverForget the lives lost and will forever be grateful for the brave souls who fought to save so many people in the Twin Towers in NYC and the Pentagon. #911Anniversary 

Like most Americans, I remember where I was that moment. I was an American Defense Department official sitting in the Kremlin negotiating with the Russian government. 

After checking on family, friends, and colleagues at DoD, our team made a hasty move to the Moscow airport, rallied with other stranded government officials at a US airbase in Germany, and took the long flight home in a KC-135 tanker rigged for passengers. There were no commercial flights allowed into the United States!

Before our return to Andrews Air Force base in Washington, our crew flew low and slow over the burning remains of the Twin Towers. The group of us on that plane -- senior civilian DoD officials and American generals -- resolved that this should never happen again.

I recount this story on the 18th anniversary of 9/11 because to this day it has NOT happened on American soil again. And that is not for the lack of the terrorists trying. The credit for that goes to our diplomats, our intelligence services, and especially to the young men and women who answered the call to military service after Sept. 11.

Those young men and women are still guarding the distant ramparts -- in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Djibouti, and in dozens of other places around the world -- ensuring that a 9/11 type attack has not befallen our shores these 18 years. These are the young men and women (and their families) that the USO proudly serves.

Winston Churchill remarked of the Royal Air Force in 1940 after the Battle of Britain that "Never was so much owed by so many to so few." Today, fewer than one percent of our country serves in our military at any time. And given the magnitude of the debt we owe to those "so few" I think -- on this anniversary of the worst attack on American soil in our history -- we can echo Churchill's expression of gratitude about our American military. 

Never was so much owed by so many to so few indeed.