Carl Higbie marked the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with a monologue arguing that America has lost sight of the tragedy, the unity that followed it and the sacrifices made by service members in the years afterward.
“One of the saddest things about this day for me on the 25th anniversary is that we forgot,” Higbie said. “We forgot how we felt watching this live on the TV. I watched these things fall with my own two eyes from the shore.”
Higbie directed much of his criticism at current political and cultural figures, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He criticized Mamdani’s conduct at the 9/11 remembrance ceremony and said the political landscape in New York would have been unimaginable to him immediately after the attacks.
Higbie also criticized Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed for campaigning alongside Hasan Piker, highlighting Piker’s past statement about the attacks.
“America deserved 9/11, dude. Fuck it. I’m saying it,” Piker said in the video clip played during Higbie’s monologue.
Higbie contrasted Piker’s remarks with the national mood following the attacks and noted that Piker was 10 years old and living in Turkey at the time.
“Tell me again, we as a society didn’t forget,” Higbie said.
Higbie then turned to his own decision to serve in the military, saying the unity he witnessed after 9/11 convinced him that the country was worth defending.
“Look, I joined the military because of 9/11. Because I really, honestly joined because of the unity I saw in the aftermath, I thought it was worth fighting for,” Higbie said.
He argued that the absence of another attack on the scale of 9/11 has created a generational divide.
Americans who are now entering the workforce after college were not alive when the attacks occurred, he noted, leaving them without firsthand memories of the event or its immediate aftermath.
“And because we did a good job protecting the homeland, we didn’t have another 9/11, and as a result, you have an entire generation of people, a quarter century old, that have absolutely no reference to what tragedy is like and the price it came with,” Higbie said.
He said military personnel paid that price while political leaders were responsible for mistakes in the wars that followed.
“We stormed into two countries to make sure the attacks like this wouldn’t go unanswered. Did we do everything perfectly over there? Absolutely not. But not because of the people who fought it, but because of the people who ran the policy. They screwed it up,” Higbie said.
Higbie said he spent nine years in and out of Iraq and lost friends during that period.
He cited the fighting in Fallujah while emphasizing the scale of what American troops were asked to do following 9/11.
His monologue also featured a clip of Rep. Ilhan Omar discussing the Council on American-Islamic Relations and civil liberties following the attacks.
“CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties,” Omar said in the clip.
“Yeah, you’re welcome for taking you in as a refugee, Ilhan,” Higbie responded.
“Some people, and she’s an elected member of the U.S. Congress, and tell me we haven’t forgotten.”
Higbie then criticized the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, pointing to the American service members killed during the withdrawal and the military equipment left behind.
He also criticized the conduct of the commander-in-chief during the dignified transfer.
He subsequently turned to the 2012 Benghazi attack and Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State.
Higbie criticized Clinton over security surrounding the U.S. diplomatic facility in Libya and played a clip of her testimony following the attack.
“The fact is, we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night and decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?” Clinton said.
Higbie argued that understanding how attacks occur matters because failing to learn from past events can lead to future losses.
“There’s a bunch of us, including my next two guests, who know what the difference is,” Higbie said.
“Because every time we forget, we have to learn the same lesson the hard way again.”
Higbie closed by returning to his central argument that 9/11 was once treated as a solemn national day of remembrance but has increasingly become entangled in political and cultural disputes.
“This day used to be a solemn, heartfelt day of remembrance, and these people have taken that from us and made it a day of anger, because we let them take it away,” Higbie said.
For Higbie, preserving the meaning of the anniversary is inseparable from remembering both those killed on Sept. 11 and those who served afterward.
“This country is still worth fighting for, so I won’t be politically correct about it,” Higbie said.
“This is America’s day, and America was founded on Christian principles. You want to coexist or whatever, you give us this day and sit down and shut up.”
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