September 11

There has been much talk about how we haven't been attacked since that terrifying, confusing, awful day in lower Manhattan and Washington seven years ago.

Never mind the similarly terrifying anthrax incidents later that same year, but in fact, the attacks masterminded by al Qaeda continue to this day, nearly every day.

9/11 happens again every time an IED explodes in Iraq, killing an American soldier.

It happens again when U.S. and Afghan troops call in an airstrike that kills Afghan civilians.

It happens every time someone is tortured in Guantanamo or Iraq, or "extraordinarily" rendered to another country for "proxy" torture.

It happens when a suicide bomber blows himself or herself up in a Baghdad market.

It happens when our politicians call for the bombing of another country that does not threaten us.

It happens when we accept those calls, with no thought to the thousands who will die for our reaction to the latest "existential" threat.

It happens when we build walls at our southern border.

It happens when our government taps our phones.

It happens when local police pre-empt political demonstrations at party conventions.

It is believed that the plotters who planned flying two planes into the World Trade Center towers seven years ago had hoped the buildings would topple, taking out many more buildings in lower Manhattan and killing thousands more.

They didn't. As we know, they collapsed in on themselves as steel girders melted in the tremendous heat.

But their fall reverberates to this day and we continue to react, as I think al Qaeda hoped, with fear of others, hatred, and disproportionate violence.