Nation must heed the advice of 9/11 commission
Lockport Journal editorial
Thursday, July 29, 2026

Now that the 9/11 commission has released its findings, the question isn’t whether the nation should adopt its recommendations.

The question is how soon those recommendations can be put into place.

“Sept. 11, 2001, was a day of unprecedented shock and suffering in the history of the United States,” the report reads. “The nation was unprepared.”

The Bush administration, the Clinton administration and Congress all could have done a better job. But the issue shouldn’t be to assess blame. The issue is: Where we go from here?

Three of the committee’s major suggestions are to:

n Create the post of national intelligence director to oversee all intelligence agencies.

n Establish a new counterterrorism office in the White House.

n Examine how congressional committees could be reorganized for oversight of intelligence.

Everyone needs to take the work of the commission seriously.

The 10 commissioners — five Republican and five Democrats — made its recommendations without dissent.

Their work was a model of nonpartisan public service.

Even as the two major political parties bitterly debate November’s presidential election, let’s hope the Bush administration and the Congress can pass the recommendations in a swift, non-partisan fashion.

“We call on the American people to remember how we felt on 9/11, to remember not only the unspeakable horror but how we came together as a nation — one nation,” the commission wrote. “Unity of purpose and unity of effort are the way we will defeat this enemy and make America safer for our children and grandchildren.”
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