It’s been six years since terrorists killed 3000 people. Bin Laden is still alive and free. Al Qaeda has regain their strength and might actually be stronger than on 9/11. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission still have not fully been implemented. Our foreign policy establishment is still dominated by people arguing about how big our empire should be instead of reacting to the realities of the new world. Public perception of this country is as low as any time in my memory. Iraq is a disaster with a theocracy being the best case outcome and violence form it serving as both a daily recruitment tool and a graduate level course in terrorist tactics. Katrina demonstrated that we are still incapable of responding to a terrorist attack.

The best you can hope for after every tragedy, after the funerals and the shock, is for justice and improvement. If the tragedy was the result of people, those people need to be held accountable. Lessons have to be learned, to make sure that every failure has been identified, every weakness addressed, every assumption and pre-conceived notion re-evaluated, every problem and process has been corrected and tested. Six years after 9/11, the country has neither.

The people in the Pentagon, in the towers, in the planes, and the men and women who risked their lives and health to try and save them deserve better than that.