KT McFarland: 20 years after 9/11 it's like we've been gut-punched again. Still, don't count Americans out

Twenty years after 9/11, those iconic pictures of the Towers burning, and then collapsing, still have the power to terrify many of us. But what happened in the days and months and years that followed September 11th, 2001 has came to define us.

Our adversaries should take note – America has been gut-punched in the past…Pearl Harbor…Sputnik…the Berlin Airlift…Saigon…Sept. 11th…and now Kabul. Every time our enemies danced with glee, predicting with great confidence our inevitable decline. They were wrong every single time.  My initial reaction, like so many New Yorkers, was to find my family. I tried calling their schools but cell phones weren’t working. The same thing happened when I called my husband’s office near Grand Central Terminal.  When I finally found a phone booth, there were long lines. I was quicker on foot and started walking back uptown.