Published: September 10, 2009 04:15 pm      

OPINION: Our View - 8 years later (Sept. 11)

We gather each year, as well we should, to pray and shed tears over the heroes and victims of 9/11. We hold vigils in their name and rename roads in their honor. Their memories will stay with us forever.

It's not nearly enough.

The way to pay homage to the 3,000 who fell is to change the world in their name. It's time - past time - to end our addiction to oil and quit funding, however indirectly, the folks who want to kill us.

Our beef isn't with the average Saudi Arabian, who may well hate al Qaeda as much as we do. It's with his government, and others like it, that call themselves our friends while funding terror on a global scale. In the case of the Saudis, it's the worldwide dissemination of a radical form of Islam used to justify hatred, terror and death.

But back to our oil problem.

We know full well what we're up against. Finding our way out of this wilderness may take longer than it took Moses. And surely it would have been easier to rally public support had we gotten an earlier start. But that's no excuse to keep dithering.

Americans are tough and smart, and we've always been willing to pull together

for the good of our nation. We think that time has come again.