THE ANNIVERSARY - AT 7:58 A.M. ET:  It is September 11th, the eighth anniversary of the day of terror.  This is a unique observance of that day, though.  It is the first time we mark it without George Bush in the White House.

What a difference a year makes.

We have gone from a deeply American president who kept the nation safe, and who understood what that meant, to a president who doesn't seem to like his country very much, and spends much of his time overseas apologizing for it.

Feel safer already?

Eight years ago we knew immediately that the threat was centered in Afghanistan.  Today The New York Times leads with this:  Obama Facing Doubts Within His Own Party on Afghanistan.  One of our two major parties, which spent years heaping abuse on George Bush for his action in Iraq, and accusing him of ignoring "the good war" in Afghanistan, now turns against the "good war" as well.

WASHINGTON — The leading Senate Democrat on military matters said Thursday that he was against sending more American combat troops to Afghanistan until the United States speeded up the training and equipping of more Afghan security forces.

The comments by the senator, Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, illustrate the growing skepticism President Obama is facing in his own party as the White House decides whether to commit more deeply to a war that has begun losing public support, even as American commanders acknowledge that the situation on the ground has deteriorated.

Of course, we know that, had Bush not gone into Iraq, the Democratic Party's left would have turned against Afghanistan even earlier.  It's in their DNA.

Who would have thought that, eight years after the real 9-11, we would be investigating the CIA agents who did so much to keep us safe? 

Who would have thought that there'd be a powerful faction of the majority party, and its allies in the media, who would love to prosecute a vice president of the United States, and to disbar lawyers who gave honest advice in those opening months of the war on terror?

Who would have thought that, after years of being falsely accused of being anti-Muslim, the United States would have a president whose middle name is Hussein, although we weren't allowed to mention it while he was running for office?

The attacks of 9-11 are a distant memory now.  Today is to the day of those attacks what December 7, 1949, was to Pearl Harbor, which had been attacked eight years earlier. 

The difference is that we always remembered Pearl Harbor, even after the Japanese were defeated.  Are most Americans, today, remembering 2001?  The intensity seems to be gone, and with it the focus on crushing our enemies.  A veritable fifth column in our universities, recalling their "triumph" over their own country in Vietnam, has been teaching for eight years that 9-11 was all our fault.  Indeed, it took only days after the attacks themselves for college professors and college presidents to start lecturing their own country.  And the campuses that refused to have ROTC then continued to refuse.  For those elements, 9-11 really never happened.

Our current president wants us to observe September 11th now with a day of volunteering.  Well, there's nothing wrong with volunteering, but we have a right to suspect, based on everything else he's said and done, that Mr. Obama would like to take the emphasis off those who attacked us, and their beliefs, and off the American military.  He is a fruit of the sixties generation, far more than Bill Clinton ever was. 

We could have had John McCain making the important speech today.  We don't have to agree with McCain on everything to realize that his ideas about 9-11 are very different from the man who defeated him.

We'll fight harder next time.

September 11, 2009