September 11th is a date seared into our collective and individual memories. All Americans old enough to remember that day know exactly where they were and what they were doing when they learned about the horrific terrorist attacks.

My family and I were, of course, overseas – in Dhaka, a vast, poor South Asian city of 20 million. Dhaka, 10 hours ahead of East Coast time, is the capital of Bangladesh.

The workday was over. I was at a Cub Scout meeting with one of our boys. The American embassy community was close-knit and Cub Scout meetings brought fathers and sons together with other families by offering a bit of small-town Americana.

Sharon was working at home – starting her teleworking day even then – while the other two children were playing close by in the den.

There was an unexpected pause during the Cub Scout meeting. The Defense Attache told us that one of the Twin Towers had been hit by a plane. We needed to go home.

Sharon turned on CNN. A plane striking the first tower was hard to comprehend. But what happened next, to the second Twin Tower, at the Pentagon, and then in Pennsylvania was impossible.

And there I was; with my wife and our three small children living in a Muslim country half a world away from home.

In the face of a crisis, we were trained to do something, anything really. We found our handheld radios and checked in with embassy security. Teams initiated a Warden Notice to alert all other Americans in the country, we called our partners and allies – America had been attacked.

On September 11th in Dhaka, Bangladesh, our lives changed forever. Our family would go on to serve overseas in South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East for the next 17 years while America was at war.

Twenty years have now passed since that tragic day. As a nation, we have learned difficult lessons. Brave service members, intelligence operatives, and diplomats have lost their lives defending us during the ongoing war on terror. We have fought costly wars abroad, that only recently have ended. Our lives at home are not the same. We have adapted to heightened levels of security and surveillance, even at the cost of sacrificing some of the personal freedoms we previously enjoyed. We remain mindful that terrorism remains a threat to our homeland.

But as we adjust to the new realities of the war on terror, I recall one bit of good that came out in the immediate aftermath of that tragedy: A firm sense of national unity. In the days and months following 9/11, we were united in mourning the dead and honoring the heroes. We were committed to fighting back and protecting ourselves from future attacks. We didn’t point fingers or place blame. We examined what went wrong and how to fix it. We were all in this together.

What a far cry from where we are today. We remain locked in a fight with a terrible disease, and yet we are literally fighting with each other over scientifically proven methods of beating it. We have seen leaders of one political party spread outright lies about the outcome of our free and fair election and incite a mob of domestic terrorists to attack and seize control of our U.S. Capitol and threaten the lives of public officials.

Andy Harris is part of this problem. He has perpetrated the Big Lie about the election and spread disinformation for political purposes. He has refused to honor the brave first responders who served and protected our Capitol when it was under attack. And even though he is a physician he has spread misinformation about the life-saving coronavirus vaccine, contributing to the flood of falsehoods that have led many people not to get inoculated and prolong the threat from the virus.

Andy Harris has got to go. He has put party before country. He has put his personal political interests ahead of the lives and health of the people he serves. He has sided with the liars. He has weakened our democracy and the time-honored institutions that have held it together. He does not believe in national unity. It does him no good. He is a divider.

I hope with this 20th anniversary of Sept. 11, we can renew ourselves again to a sense of national purpose. I hope we can recognize that we are stronger when we work together than when we are divided. I hope we can understand that with our rights and freedoms also come responsibilities – including the responsibility to do our part for the common good.

God bless those who serve and protect us. God bless our first responders. God bless our health care workers who fight tirelessly on the front lines of the pandemic. And God bless America.

Dave