As we go about commemorating what happened in Oklahoma City fifteen years ago today, I’d like to point out a few things that have been forgotten (or intentionally obscured for political reasons) during the intervening years:

Terrorism is a tactic, not a creed, a religion, or a race. Terrorists do not all come from a specific country or speak a specific language. Other people who happen to share a creed, religion, race, or language with terrorists are not necessarily terrorists themselves.

Terrorists cannot be identified merely by the way they look. Indeed, they are most effective when they look just like us. Sometimes, they are us.

Terrorists don’t resort to terrorism because they’re afraid of a “fair fight.” Terrorism is a technique employed by those who don’t have the resources to effectively combat a larger, better equipped military force. Terrorists are not cowards. They may be desperate and/or misguided, they may be lacking what we would think of as honor, they may even be insane, but they are most certainly not lacking in courage. And thinking of them that way only underestimates them.

The point of terrorism is not specifically to kill people, but to make the survivors afraid, to make them lose the will to continue doing whatever it is the terrorists don’t want them doing. The best way to deny terrorists their victory is to “keep calm and carry on.”

Most importantly, there is no way to stop terrorism per se. You can stop a particular terrorist plot or terrorist group, but terrorism itself is an idea, and you can’t destroy those. If we exterminated al Qaeda to the last man, if we finally decided to go all-in and turn the entire Middle East into radioactive glass, it wouldn’t mean that there would never be another act of terrorism.

Just some food for thought as we remember those who lost their lives to the most destructive act of terrorism perpetrated on US soil until 9/11/2001. May they rest in peace.