Rudy: 9/11 “part of our present,” not our past

Fox News in New York City talks to the man who stood tall on 9/11 in the Big Apple, Rudy Giuliani, who shares his memories and talks about the lessons of the awful day eight years ago. Giuliani warned that a lot of people have forgotten the lessons of the terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 people — not the military and first responders, but ordinary people and more than a few politicians. He hits the nail on the head when he tells Fox that 9/11 is not part of our history, but very much part of the present, and that a failure to understand that could result in another terrorist attack:

Regardless of how one sees Giuliani from a policy perspective, and there’s plenty of room for disagreement with him there, he represents the kind of gut-check leadership most people crave from their politicians. Rudy became America’s Mayor in the aftermath of the attacks because he acted; he got to the ground and took command. He gave us our first sense that things were not going to be all right — no one could possibly have thought that — but that someone had arrived to put a stop to things getting much, much worse.

Regardless of party or policy, America needed that sense of command, of response, and of fight on September 11, 2001. No matter what else Rudy Giuliani may do in his career, I will always say a prayer of thanks that he was there when we needed him. Like the commentators on Fox, I’m pretty sure that voters will look for that kind of catastrophe-tested leadership at some level in the future.

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