It is appropriate that the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attack is when Rosh HaShanah starts in the evening. The last thing on anyone’s mind when they went to work in the Twin Towers on the morning of 9/11 was that they would never make it home. The same could be said for those on the three planes that were hijacked that day. It is a reminder that we cannot take anything for granted, including being alive.

I had that experience when I saw a body bag a couple of weeks ago while riding my bike and found it very unsettling. I wrote about it in a recent column, and I also said that, knowing me, I would move on, but if sharing the story affected another person, it was worth going through the experience. I now know one person, Shalom Markowitz, who was affected by it. He wrote a letter to the editor to apologize if he personally offended me in any of his letters. I appreciate the apology, even though I was never offended by anything he or my other critics have said about me.

It may be a Hecht tradition from my grandfather, who stayed frum (religious) in America even though he was subject to ridicule and lost jobs because he refused to work on Shabbos. Those were the days when Shabbos hashkama minyans were set up so men could daven before they went to work. To put it another way, the attitude is: I am going to do or say what I want to do. If you do not like it, it is your problem.

There are other people who do not have my thick skin and attitude who are affected by it. I remember I once criticized someone and thought I was not so harsh, but I heard that the person’s wife was very upset about it. I have not criticized the person since then. The point is that we who may be passionate in our beliefs sometimes need to take a step back and ask if we can make the same argument without personal attacks or inflammatory rhetoric.

I am fortunate that my editor (my wife) is there to tone down some of my comments when I may be over the top. Robust debate is important and should not be silenced.

I am not going to go through my experience on 9/11; it is irrelevant. What bothers me even to this day is that it should never have happened. This was not the first terrorist attack on American soil. In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed.

The 9/11 attack was not a complex military operation by a country such as Russia. It was a small group of guys who were able to attack the heart of our country with a low-tech and low-cost operation. There were so many signs and chances to foil the operation, yet nothing was done. No one who fouled up ever paid the price for their incompetence. The only people who paid the price were those who died and many others who were injured or sickened by the attacks and their aftermath.

There are many culprits, but for this column I will focus on the military.

Even after the first plane crashed into the North Tower at 8:46 a.m., there was still time to do something. The problem was that the military was totally unprepared for an internal terrorist attack and was frozen in its response. They were also trained to deal with a Russian attack from the sea.

There was also a sense of arrogance that we have the strongest military in the world. We are impregnable. Instead, the military, with all its expensive weapon systems and hardware, could not even protect the Pentagon, which was attacked 51 minutes after the first plane crashed into the North Tower and 34 minutes after the second plane crashed into the South Tower.

If it were not for the passengers on Flight 93 who charged the cockpit and forced the plane down in Pennsylvania, the terrorists would have flown the plane into the Capitol or the White House.

One of the few positive things that came from the attack was that the country came together. Also, both parties were willing to have a serious bipartisan review of the events that led to the attacks, the failures to stop the attacks, and suggestions to make sure it would not happen again.

That review led to the creation of the 9/11 Commission, which issued a report that was published. I have the report but have not read it in a while. For those who have the time, it is important and informative reading.

It does not appear that the military has learned from its mistakes. There is the same arrogance and the obsession with wanting to spend on fancy weapons, even though their value is debatable. Also, the military is not learning from the situation around them and is not preparing for a result that, with any thought, would be obvious.

I am referring to how the military is executing the Iran war. The Strait of Hormuz was open before the war started. One did not have to be a military genius to figure out that if you attack Iran, they would try to close the Strait of Hormuz or otherwise use leverage over it. Yet the military seemed totally surprised and unprepared by the result.

Likewise, Russia’s failure to defeat Ukraine using conventional weapons should have been a wake-up call to the United States. Ukraine has shown that the use of drone technology can result in a small nation being able to cause extreme damage and excessive costs to a nation using traditional weapons. Iran learned from Ukraine, but we have not.

The Secretary of Defense forced out those generals who wanted to address the new world of drone technology and disbanded a specialized drone unit in the Army. It is only a matter of time before a terrorist group uses this technology to attack the United States. Do we need another 9/11 for those in charge to understand the threat?

Many go from one Rosh HaShanah to another and look back and ask themselves, “Have I really changed?” We as a country must do that same self-reflection to see if we have changed in the last 25 years to make sure something as horrible as 9/11 never happens again.

Have a happy and healthy new year, and may we all be inscribed in the Book of Life.

Warren S. Hecht is a local attorney. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.