Sept. 11, 2001.

It seems so long ago, so distant.

But, somehow, so immediate and significant. Forever, people from every corner of the country will remember where they were when the Twin Towers fell in New York, when the Pentagon erupted into flames in Virginia, when airline passengers-turned-heroes thwarted their murderers’ plans with a desperate revolt in the skies over Pennsylvania.

The fourth anniversary of the terror attacks cannot pass without notice. It would be an injustice to the innocent victims who died and to the men and women who gave their lives trying to save them.

We have not forgotten the victims, and we have not forgotten the attacker.

Four years have passed, and Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi mastermind and financier behind the attacks, remains free. The government that shielded him has been toppled, the Taliban forced into the hills of Afghanistan. But the man, the personification of terror and Islamic fascism, has escaped. His power has been curtailed, his reach limited, but justice requires more.

We don’t hear too much about bin Laden anymore. On most days, he’s slipped from the national consciousness, replaced by the villainy of insurgents in Iraq or the amoral killer called Katrina. It shouldn’t be so.

In hindsight, it’s apparent what has happened. The desire to topple Saddam Hussein and invade Iraq drew military resources away from Afghanistan when bin Laden was within reach. The president decided that Saddam had to be dealt with. Instead of finishing bin Laden off, he was allowed to slip away.

The United States is a country changed by the events of Sept. 11.

Our national character and our image in the world have suffered. We have traded some freedoms and civil liberties for security – and gotten a bad deal. We are bogged down in the middle of a near civil war in Iraq. For what? Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction and posed no threat to the United States. The legacy of U.S. intervention could turn out to be an Islamic republic, trapped in the Middle Ages by religious dogma, but running on the high-octane juice of immense oil wealth.

Other things have remained the same. Our homeland security infrastructure – after a complete overhaul and billions of dollars – remains ill-prepared for a catastrophe. Hurricane Katrina and the descent of New Orleans into chaos in its aftermath are the proof.

The lessons of Sept. 11 were forgotten. Communications systems failed. There was little coordination between local, state and federal government. The heroics of thousands could not overcome the lack of centralized command and control. The result: People died when they could have been saved.

Chest-deep in water and despair, the faces in New Orleans were eerily reminiscent of New York four years ago, the caked-on gray dust of destruction replaced by a toxic soup of floodwater.

Four years ago, with the anguish of death still thick, we as a country swore we would not be taken by surprise again, that we would get the killers who had attacked us, that we would build a better world and a better United States. That work remains undone.