It is an image burned in our memories, and has a name: “Falling Man.” Twenty years ago, on September 11, 2001, almost 3,000 souls were lost to Islamist terror. Of those slaughtered, this man was one of hundreds in the World Trade Center, caught between death and death, who leapt 100 floors. His identity remains unknown, other than that he was an innocent American and he was murdered.

We who watched the coverage live recall the sickening thuds punctuating the unfolding horror, as body after body hit the ground. Everything about that day was heartbreak, but the hollow sound of human lives ending was impossible to bear.

That agony was captured in “Falling Man.” Even if you only saw it once, you never forgot it. And the left has tried to ensure you only saw it once.

As Esquire put it on 9/9/16, “Do you remember this photograph? In the United States, people have taken pains to banish it from the record of September 11, 2001.”

In most American newspapers, the photograph that [AP’s] Richard Drew took of the Falling Man ran once and never again. Papers all over the country … were forced to defend themselves against charges that they exploited a man’s death, stripped him of his dignity, invaded his privacy… In the most photographed and videotaped day in the history of the world, the images of people jumping were the only images that became … taboo.

The left instantly recognized — and resented — the power of this photo. “Falling Man” was not a building or jet engulfed in inferno but an American, plummeting toward earth in his last moments. It wordlessly conveyed stark human terror and excruciating loss; it personalized the wound inflicted on our country. It is an intimate photo, as each viewer asks, “What would I do?” It is a profound image of mortality, and impossible to view without deep emotion and protectiveness. As Americans grieved for so much that day, we grieved for Falling Man, our fellow countryman, fallen.

Which is exactly why liberals immediately began a campaign of shaming — recognizable now on social media when the left-mob descends — “How dare you! This is too painful to family members! It’s too soon!” And so, Esquire reports, “One of the most famous photographs in human history became an unmarked grave, and the man buried inside its frame — the Falling Man — became the Unknown Soldier in a war whose end we have not yet seen.”

It is an image that continues to make leftists seethe. As Bryan Preston writes at PJ Media: “I posted a photo of the ‘Falling Man’ … on my personal Facebook account. I headlined the photo simply, ‘Still angry.’” Then the photo was blurred by the social media censors and labeled “Sensitive content.” Complete with an icon of a stylized eye with a slash through it, which communicates a guiding principle of leftism: “do not look at this.”

That has been the consistent liberal message since we were attacked. The left despises the annual 9/11 memorials, the solemn reading of the names of victims, the patriotic feelings that well up every time people pause to remember. According to The New York Post, there will be no “Tribute in Light” in New York for the 20th anniversary. Nothing has been planned by Mayor de Blasio or the departing Gov. Cuomo. “The National September 11 Memorial & Museum … says it can’t afford to mount special exhibitions … to mark the two-decade milestone.” Supposedly due to covid, only the victims’ families will be present at the names ceremony. “No hero firefighters, cops, first responders, or emergency workers … are invited.”

And here’s how Joe Biden planned to stomp on twenty years of 9/11 memory: his intention was to mark a Taliban victory on that very day. The Biden Regime proudly announced the betrayal last April 13, through their comrades at The New York Times:

President Biden will withdraw American combat troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, declaring an end to the nation’s longest war and overruling warnings from his military advisors that the departure could prompt a resurgence of the same terrorist threats that sent hundreds of thousands of troops into combat over the past 20 years… [T]he President is doing things his way, with the deadline set for the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

You can imagine the anniversary photo op he had envisioned, a great military parade in his honor as turbaned members of the Taliban crowned him with laurel while chanting “Death to America!”

Well, it turns out the Taliban very much liked the schedule. After they took over the country on 8/15/21, reports Sky News, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen flipped the tables as to who was giving the orders: “The U.S. must remove all its troops from Afghanistan by September 11.” According to the bbc, yet another Taliban spokesman (they have amazing PR), Zabiullah Mujahid, crowed, “We have defeated a great power.”

No, you defeated Joe Biden. The most feckless President in U.S. history.

In an amazing twist, Biden, who had sought an aggrandizing American Exit photo op to mark the big 9/11 anniversary, instead got images of human beings plunging to their deaths from U.S. military aircraft flying out of Kabul. As a direct result of Biden’s orders and the complete collapse of his Presidency, people fleeing the Biden-spawned Taliban takeover tried to escape by clinging to the landing gear. The falling men instantly reminded everyone watching of the iconic Falling Man.

The moral clarity from that moment has come rushing back. For the left, it’s like holding up the cross to a vampire. The left has worked hard to squelch our collective memory; they’ve had 20 years to transform the post-9/11 appreciation of cops into hating and defunding them. To convert the ubiquitous flag lapel pins into flag protests. To morph from celebrating the American way of life into denigrating it as the repulsive repository of systemic racism.

And the left’s latest attempt to step on the memory of 9/11 is to claim the four-hour riot on January 6 was “worse than 9/11”:

• “January 6th is … the biggest security threat we face… Osama Bin Laden never took over the Capitol.  These people did.” — Paul Rieckhoff, leftist activist, on msnbc, 7/29/21
• “The 1/6 attack for the future of the country was a profoundly more dangerous event than the 9/11 attacks.” — Steve Schmidt, McCain 2008 strategist, YouTube, 7/8/21
• “January 6 was worse than 9/11 because it’s continued to rip our country apart.” — Matthew Dowd, Bush 2004 strategist, on msnbc, 7/6/21
• “1000 percent worse.” — S.V. Dáte, White House correspondent, The Huffington Post, on Twitter, 5/24/21
• “I would like to see January 6th burned into the American mind as firmly as 9/11 because it was that scale of a shock to the system.” — George Will, abc’s “This Week,” 5/23/21

These comments infuriate Joe Connor, who lost his cousin in the World Trade Center and who watched the towers fall from his nearby Manhattan office. He told Fox News: “I saw people jumping out. I saw the sides of the buildings explode. I saw papers floating in the wind, and I tried to call my cousin, no one picked up… The terror, the carnage, the horror of 9/11, 20 years ago. They’ve forgotten, or they think the rest of us have forgotten.”

The only way such statements could even come out of the unworthy mouths of these people is due to 20 years of leftism’s blanket over the truth. Because you know what’s really “worse than 9/11”? The next 9/11, engendered by stupid, feckless leftist policies. Unless we never forget.

There’s a reason those two simple words were chosen by Americans — not by elites — as the enduring message of 9/11. “Never Forget” is our absolute mission, forever. Never forget the 3,000 who died and the twenty-five thousand who got out, thanks to the 500 firemen and cops who laid down their lives. Never forget that we Americans are the good guys, and never forget what freedom is, and what it costs.

In his 1981 inaugural address, Ronald Reagan said: “We are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We are not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline… It does require our best effort, our work, and our willingness to believe in ourselves and in our capacity to perform great deeds; that together and with God’s help we can and will resolve the problems which confront us. Why shouldn’t we believe that? After all, we are Americans.”

Our memory of who we are is exactly what the left is bent on erasing. They will fall.

Photo ©2021 Shutterstock/Richard Drew