I stood in a large cafeteria room watching dual televisions mounted high on the walls. My friends Sandy and Donna, both natives of New York City, said the internet had reports of a small commuter plane hitting the World Trade Center. I told them I'd check it out.

As I watched the live video, I thought the amount of smoke pouring out of the tower seemed far too great for this to have been a Cessna. But, since no one seemed to know anything with certainty, I simply walked back to the command center and told my friends it looked like the internet was right. A small disaster, but nothing to be concerned about.

Of course, within minutes, everything changed. And I mean everything.

Yesterday, marked eight years since that horrific day. Eight years since I took my little boy into our front yard and made him note the emptiness of the skies above, the first day in nearly 100 years that no American civilian was allowed to fly.

Our president, a man who was an Illinois state legislator at the time of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, has made an effort to stop the anniversary of that day from being simply a memorial event and transforming it into a combined day of remembrance and service.

And while this sounds noble - and, in fact, can be a noble means of tribute to those whom we lost in rubble, wreckage and flames on that day - there is a danger in this approach that we must be careful to avoid.

The events of that day did not occur because Americans were not taking care of one another. Our compassion for our fellow countrymen was as high as it had ever been. In the United States, churches and charities were experiencing record levels of donation in 2001. Communities were booming and growing while taking care of and elevating even their most indigent residents.

In fact, we had become so focused upon one another, so aware of our "neighbors", that America ignored the greatest danger.

Despite what many still want us to believe, there is a comparatively large percentage of the world's population that hopes for, prays for, and actively pursues the destruction of the United States and her citizens. Many (in fact, most) of these people are Muslims who have embraced or tolerate the most fanatical ideologies of their theology. And they now not only reside in countries where the 9/11 hijackers originated - Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt. These people now live here - in the United States.

While performing an act of kindness or service to another American in the memory of a fallen victim of 9/11 terrorism can be a healing and transformative event, we would all do well to remember that it was not our fellow Americans who betrayed us upon that day. We did not wake up that day, as we did on April 19, 1995 in Oklahoma City, to find it was our own countrymen who had tried to destroy their nation.

Instead, 9/11 should be now and should forever remain a day in which we promise ourselves, our neighbors and our children to be ever vigilant for threats from both within and without. A day, like December 7, wherein we remember those sacrificed and where we renew our promise to do everything in our power that the two-word commitment spoken on those days will gain new adherents - and that it become that much closer to becoming a reality.

Never again.