Sixteen long years have passed since the clear blue sky above New York City exploded in an inferno, with toxic smoke and the stench of burning flesh and death, on September 11, 2001.  For many, the memories of the murder of nearly three thousand Americans, friends and relatives and fellow countrymen, remains as fresh as this morning's dew.  Those of us, who remember all too well, have the solemn obligation and duty to ensure that America's future generations do not soon forget that Islamic jihadists struck the single deadliest attack on U.S. soil by any foe since the War of 1812.

Two thousand nine-hundred and seventy-seven Americans never could have imagined the horror they would soon face the morning of 9/11 as they headed to work at the Twin Towers.  Their thoughts were filled with work, schedules, and perhaps returning home to play softball with their children or having dinner with a fiancé or a husband or a wife.

It was 8:46 A.M. (EST) when nineteen Muslim terrorists flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.  Seventeen minutes later, 9:03 A.M., Muslim terrorists hit the South Tower with United Airlines Flight 175.  Thirty-four minutes later, American Airlines Flight 77 flew into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

People jumped and fell from all four sides of both towers.  There's no way of accurately telling how many people died this way, but the horror they experienced just before their deaths is unimaginable as they plummeted toward the earth.

The end to this heinous attack and the final blow arrived with the horrifying news that United Airlines Flight 93 crashed, while its passengers bravely fought the terrorists.  From start to finish, nearly an hour and a half had elapsed.  By 10:03 A.M., nearly 3,000 innocent Americans – loved ones, friends, and neighbors – were dead.

Set aside any emotional impulse to block 9/11 from one's mind, and embrace the gut-wrenching memory.  Remember that America was attacked because of her freedom and her stand against oppression and tyranny worldwide.  And there are many other things America should never forget, while we lower the flag, lay wreaths, and ring bells in memory of the dead this September 11.

Never forget that America received many warnings that a clash between Islam and the West, a clash of civilizations, was on the way, with tragedies like the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon and the U.S. Embassy in Kenya and the suicide bombing attack on the USS Cole.  We were even informed ahead of 9/11 that it was coming soon.

The first real warning occurred on February 26, 1993, when Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, master bomb-designer, detonated a bomb under the World Trade Center, on orders from al-Qaeda's Blind Sheikh, that carved out a stories-deep crater, injured a thousand people, and killed six.  The bomb was supposed to kill thousands by releasing a cyanide cloud; however, the explosion incinerated the gas.

Never forget that since 9/11, at least thirteen Islamic-inspired terrorist attacks have been carried out across America, by Muslims following Mohammed's "perfect" example, such as we witnessed in the Boston Bombing; the D.C. sniper murders; and the shootings at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, San Bernadino, Chattanooga, and several others.  There have been numerous attacks by Muslims that the press refuses to call "terrorism," and there have been scores of terror plots and attempted terrorist acts foiled by the authorities.

Never forget that the nineteen Muslim terrorists were able to attack America on September 11, 2001 because they were trained and funded by Wahhabist imams and members of the Saudi royal family, as revealed by the 9/11 Commission Report.  And recall that they also had some large degree of help from Shiite Muslims in the Islamic Republic of Iran, having spent significant time in Iran between October 2000 and February 2001.

The fires of that September morning burned for 100 days and moved America to seek an accounting from these sons of Allah in wars we are still fighting.  Islam is at war with Western civilization, Europe, and America, just as Islam fought us (infidels and Westerners) under the Ottoman Empire, or a thousand years ago, now that Islam is in a new ascendancy.

America is still in an ongoing war against us, being waged by Islam, its imams and jihadi terrorists, who want to do the very same thing today that they did sixteen years ago, except on a grander scale.

The United States intelligence community acknowledges that all al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have had some recent, if limited, success in acquiring chemical weapons, like anthrax, VX nerve agents, and ricin.  More troubling and dangerous, they seek nuclear weapons, as Graham Allison notes in a policy brief for Harvard's Belfer Center; and though many may see any success toward this as unlikely, it is certainly not implausible, given Iran's, Pakistan's, and Saudi Arabia's duplicitous, self-serving roles in the "war on terror."

No one ever envisioned that jet airliners would be used as Muslim terrorists' instruments of death against us.  However, September 11 brought a new visual reality, as officials sworn to protect America were forced to stare into a vast, smoking pit scooped out of lower Manhattan.  As then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice repeatedly stated, "if you were in the White House that day ... every day since has been September twelfth.  And your great fear is that it may be September tenth."

In his book The Field of Fight, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn wrote: "We're in a world war, but very few Americans recognize it, and fewer still have any idea how to win it."

Americans have the agonizing images of the horrible and unimaginable calamity of September 11 seared into their minds and hearts.  We never forgot the lives so brutally and callously cut short, the children who lost mothers and fathers, and the sorrow that followed – and we clearly remember the depths of inhumanity to which these Islamic terrorists are willing to sink, as we ring the bells, read the names, and honor our dead.  September 11, 2001 forced many Americans to the understanding that America must gather the strength and courage to stop Islam's violent ascendancy and expansion, at home and abroad, by driving their "holy warriors" into the ground, killing them, and even killing their families, until they grow weary of death and make war no more, if that is the only way to end their insanity.