In remembering 9-11 the thing that comes as the biggest surprise to me is how normal life in Manhattan has been for years now. I can’t really tell if that is because we have consciously chosen to remain vulnerable over being a locked down city or if there are massive but invisible forces protecting us. Most days I don’t think about it, but today it is hard not to reflect and I think the answer is likely to be the former. I am happy that it is not like my childhood memories from Germany during the Baader Meinhof days where I was cowering in the back of my Dad’s car as we were passing through heavily armed guard posts that inspected every drivers license. But I also have this nagging feeling that we are being too careless. For instance, it is stunning to me that there are still bridges into Manhattan without toll booths. Even if they were to charge only a minimal toll it would seem that we should slow down every vehicle entering Manhattan and have a chance to apply various detection methods to it. The other big surprise is how easy the government is making it to forget that we are fighting a full on war in Afghanistan (and still have a strong presence in Iraq). Maybe it is simply that there are so many domestic issues to deal with, but there doesn’t seem to be much of an effort to keep the public aware. For instance, whenever we debate healthcare reform, we should be reminded (and remind ourselves) that we have the luxury of having that debate in part because there are men and women fighting and dying every day in incredibly tough terrain against a guerrilla style enemy. Maybe that would add a bit of civility to the debate and help us focus on achieving a goal instead of posturing.