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Two Decades Later, the Enduring Legacy of 9/11

Table of contents, a devastating emotional toll, a lasting historical legacy, 9/11 transformed u.s. public opinion, but many of its impacts were short-lived, u.s. military response: afghanistan and iraq, the ‘new normal’: the threat of terrorism after 9/11, addressing the threat of terrorism at home and abroad, views of muslims, islam grew more partisan in years after 9/11.

Americans watched in horror as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, left nearly 3,000 people dead in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Nearly 20 years later, they watched in sorrow as the nation’s military mission in Afghanistan – which began less than a month after 9/11 – came to a bloody and chaotic conclusion.

The enduring power of the Sept. 11 attacks is clear: An overwhelming share of Americans who are old enough to recall the day remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. Yet an ever-growing number of Americans have no personal memory of that day, either because they were too young or not yet born.

A review of U.S. public opinion in the two decades since 9/11 reveals how a badly shaken nation came together, briefly, in a spirit of sadness and patriotism; how the public initially rallied behind the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, though support waned over time; and how Americans viewed the threat of terrorism at home and the steps the government took to combat it.

As the country comes to grips with the tumultuous exit of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan, the departure has raised long-term questions about U.S. foreign policy and America’s place in the world. Yet the public’s initial judgments on that mission are clear: A majority endorses the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, even as it criticizes the Biden administration’s handling of the situation. And after a war that cost thousands of lives – including more than 2,000 American service members – and trillions of dollars in military spending, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that 69% of U.S. adults say the United States has mostly failed to achieve its goals in Afghanistan.

This examination of how the United States changed in the two decades following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is based on an analysis of past public opinion survey data from Pew Research Center, news reports and other sources.

Current data is from a Pew Research Center survey of 10,348 U.S. adults conducted Aug. 23-29, 2021. Most of the interviewing was conducted before the Aug. 26 suicide bombing at Kabul airport, and all of it was conducted before the completion of the evacuation. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the  ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used  for the report, along with responses, and  its methodology .

Shock, sadness, fear, anger: The 9/11 attacks inflicted a devastating emotional toll on Americans. But as horrible as the events of that day were, a 63% majority of Americans said they couldn’t stop watching news coverage of the attacks.

Our first survey following the attacks went into the field just days after 9/11, from Sept. 13-17, 2001. A sizable majority of adults (71%) said they felt depressed, nearly half (49%) had difficulty concentrating and a third said they had trouble sleeping.

It was an era in which television was still the public’s dominant news source – 90% said they got most of their news about the attacks from television, compared with just 5% who got news online – and the televised images of death and destruction had a powerful impact. Around nine-in-ten Americans (92%) agreed with the statement, “I feel sad when watching TV coverage of the terrorist attacks.” A sizable majority (77%) also found it frightening to watch – but most did so anyway.

Americans were enraged by the attacks, too. Three weeks after 9/11 , even as the psychological stress began to ease somewhat, 87% said they felt angry about the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Fear was widespread, not just in the days immediately after the attacks, but throughout the fall of 2001. Most Americans said they were very (28%) or somewhat (45%) worried about another attack . When asked a year later to describe how their lives changed in a major way, about half of adults said they felt more afraid, more careful, more distrustful or more vulnerable as a result of the attacks.

Even after the immediate shock of 9/11 had subsided, concerns over terrorism remained at higher levels in major cities – especially New York and Washington – than in small towns and rural areas. The personal impact of the attacks also was felt more keenly in the cities directly targeted: Nearly a year after 9/11, about six-in-ten adults in the New York (61%) and Washington (63%) areas said the attacks had changed their lives at least a little, compared with 49% nationwide. This sentiment was shared by residents of other large cities. A quarter of people who lived in large cities nationwide said their lives had changed in a major way – twice the rate found in small towns and rural areas.

The impacts of the Sept. 11 attacks were deeply felt and slow to dissipate. By the following August, half of U.S. adults said the country “had changed in a major way” – a number that actually increased , to 61%, 10 years after the event .

A year after the attacks, in an open-ended question, most Americans – 80% – cited 9/11 as the most important event that had occurred in the country during the previous year. Strikingly, a larger share also volunteered it as the most important thing that happened to them personally in the prior year (38%) than mentioned other typical life events, such as births or deaths. Again, the personal impact was much greater in New York and Washington, where 51% and 44%, respectively, pointed to the attacks as the most significant personal event over the prior year.

Just as memories of 9/11 are firmly embedded in the minds of most Americans old enough to recall the attacks, their historical importance far surpasses other events in people’s lifetimes. In a survey conducted by Pew Research Center in association with A+E Networks’ HISTORY in 2016 – 15 years after 9/11 – 76% of adults named the Sept. 11 attacks as one of the 10 historical events of their lifetime that had the greatest impact on the country. The election of Barack Obama as the first Black president was a distant second, at 40%.

The importance of 9/11 transcended age, gender, geographic and even political differences. The 2016 study noted that while partisans agreed on little else that election cycle, more than seven-in-ten Republicans and Democrats named the attacks as one of their top 10 historic events.

It is difficult to think of an event that so profoundly transformed U.S. public opinion across so many dimensions as the 9/11 attacks. While Americans had a shared sense of anguish after Sept. 11, the months that followed also were marked by rare spirit of public unity.

Patriotic sentiment surged in the aftermath of 9/11. After the U.S. and its allies launched airstrikes against Taliban and al-Qaida forces in early October 2001, 79% of adults said they had displayed an American flag. A year later, a 62% majority said they had often felt patriotic as a result of the 9/11 attacks.

Moreover, the public largely set aside political differences and rallied in support of the nation’s major institutions, as well as its political leadership. In October 2001, 60% of adults expressed trust in the federal government – a level not reached in the previous three decades, nor approached in the two decades since then.

George W. Bush, who had become president nine months earlier after a fiercely contested election, saw his job approval rise 35 percentage points in the space of three weeks. In late September 2001, 86% of adults – including nearly all Republicans (96%) and a sizable majority of Democrats (78%) – approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president.

Americans also turned to religion and faith in large numbers. In the days and weeks after 9/11, most Americans said they were praying more often. In November 2001, 78% said religion’s influence in American life was increasing, more than double the share who said that eight months earlier and – like public trust in the federal government – the highest level in four decades .

Public esteem rose even for some institutions that usually are not that popular with Americans. For example, in November 2001, news organizations received record-high ratings for professionalism. Around seven-in-ten adults (69%) said they “stand up for America,” while 60% said they protected democracy.

Yet in many ways, the “9/11 effect” on public opinion was short-lived. Public trust in government, as well as confidence in other institutions, declined throughout the 2000s. By 2005, following another major national tragedy – the government’s mishandling of the relief effort for victims of Hurricane Katrina – just 31% said they trusted the federal government, half the share who said so in the months after 9/11. Trust has remained relatively low for the past two decades: In April of this year, only 24% said they trusted the government just about always or most of the time.

Bush’s approval ratings, meanwhile, never again reached the lofty heights they did shortly after 9/11. By the end of his presidency, in December 2008, just 24% approved of his job performance.

With the U.S. now formally out of Afghanistan – and with the Taliban firmly in control of the country – most Americans (69%) say the U.S. failed in achieving its goals in Afghanistan.

But 20 years ago, in the days and weeks following 9/11, Americans overwhelmingly supported military action against those responsible for the attacks. In mid-September 2001, 77% favored U.S. military action, including the deployment of ground forces, “to retaliate against whoever is responsible for the terrorist attacks, even if that means U.S. armed forces might suffer thousands of casualties.”

Many Americans were impatient for the Bush administration to give the go-ahead for military action. In a late September 2001 survey, nearly half the public (49%) said their larger concern was that the Bush administration would not strike quickly enough against the terrorists; just 34% said they worried the administration would move too quickly.

Even in the early stages of the U.S. military response, few adults expected a military operation to produce quick results: 69% said it would take months or years to dismantle terrorist networks, including 38% who said it would take years and 31% who said it would take several months. Just 18% said it would take days or weeks.

The public’s support for military intervention was evident in other ways as well. Throughout the fall of 2001, more Americans said the best way to prevent future terrorism was to take military action abroad rather than build up defenses at home. In early October 2001, 45% prioritized military action to destroy terrorist networks around the world, while 36% said the priority should be to build terrorism defenses at home.

Initially, the public was confident that the U.S. military effort to destroy terrorist networks would succeed. A sizable majority (76%) was confident in the success of this mission, with 39% saying they were very confident.

Support for the war in Afghanistan continued at a high level for several years to come. In a survey conducted in early 2002, a few months after the start of the war, 83% of Americans said they approved of the U.S.-led military campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan. In 2006, several years after the United States began combat operations in Afghanistan, 69% of adults said the U.S. made the right decision in using military force in Afghanistan. Only two-in-ten said it was the wrong decision.

But as the conflict dragged on, first through Bush’s presidency and then through Obama’s administration, support wavered and a growing share of Americans favored the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. In June 2009, during Obama’s first year in office, 38% of Americans said U.S. troops should be removed from Afghanistan as soon as possible. The share favoring a speedy troop withdrawal increased over the next few years. A turning point came in May 2011, when U.S. Navy SEALs launched a risky operation against Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and killed the al-Qaida leader.

The public reacted to bin Laden’s death with more of a sense of relief than jubilation . A month later, for the first time , a majority of Americans (56%) said that U.S. forces should be brought home as soon as possible, while 39% favored U.S. forces in the country until the situation had stabilized.

Over the next decade, U.S. forces in Afghanistan were gradually drawn down, in fits and starts, over the administrations of three presidents – Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Meanwhile, public support for the decision to use force in Afghanistan, which had been widespread at the start of the conflict, declined . Today, after the tumultuous exit of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, a slim majority of adults (54%) say the decision to withdraw troops from the country was the right decision; 42% say it was the wrong decision. 

There was a similar trajectory in public attitudes toward a much more expansive conflict that was part of what Bush termed the “war on terror”: the U.S. war in Iraq. Throughout the contentious, yearlong debate before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Americans widely supported the use of military force to end Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq.

Importantly, most Americans thought – erroneously, as it turned out – there was a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks. In October 2002, 66% said that Saddam helped the terrorists involved in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In April 2003, during the first month of the Iraq War, 71% said the U.S. made the right decision to go to war in Iraq. On the 15th anniversary of the war in 2018, just 43% said it was the right decision. As with the case with U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, more Americans said that the U.S. had failed (53%) than succeeded (39%) in achieving its goals in Iraq.

There have been no terrorist attacks on the scale of 9/11 in two decades, but from the public’s perspective, the threat has never fully gone away. Defending the country from future terrorist attacks has been at or near the top of Pew Research Center’s annual survey on policy priorities since 2002.

In January 2002, just months after the 2001 attacks, 83% of Americans said “defending the country from future terrorist attacks” was a top priority for the president and Congress, the highest for any issue. Since then, sizable majorities have continued to cite that as a top policy priority.

Majorities of both Republicans and Democrats have consistently ranked terrorism as a top priority over the past two decades, with some exceptions. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have remained more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to say defending the country from future attacks should be a top priority. In recent years, the partisan gap has grown larger as Democrats began to rank the issue lower relative to other domestic concerns. The public’s concerns about another attack also remained fairly steady in the years after 9/11, through near-misses and the federal government’s numerous “Orange Alerts” – the second-most serious threat level on its color-coded terrorism warning system.

A 2010 analysis of the public’s terrorism concerns found that the share of Americans who said they were very concerned about another attack had ranged from about 15% to roughly 25% since 2002. The only time when concerns were elevated was in February 2003, shortly before the start of the U.S. war in Iraq.

In recent years, the share of Americans who point to terrorism as a major national problem has declined sharply as issues such as the economy, the COVID-19 pandemic and racism have emerged as more pressing problems in the public’s eyes.

In 2016, about half of the public (53%) said terrorism was a very big national problem in the country. This declined to about four-in-ten from 2017 to 2019. Last year, only a quarter of Americans said that terrorism was a very big problem.

This year, prior to the U.S. withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan and the subsequent Taliban takeover of the country, a somewhat larger share of adults said domestic terrorism was a very big national problem (35%) than said the same about international terrorism . But much larger shares cited concerns such as the affordability of health care (56%) and the federal budget deficit (49%) as major problems than said that about either domestic or international terrorism.

Still, recent events in Afghanistan raise the possibility that opinion could be changing, at least in the short term. In a late August survey, 89% of Americans said the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was a threat to the security of the U.S., including 46% who said it was a major threat.

Just as Americans largely endorsed the use of U.S. military force as a response to the 9/11 attacks, they were initially open to a variety of other far-reaching measures to combat terrorism at home and abroad. In the days following the attack, for example, majorities favored a requirement that all citizens carry national ID cards, allowing the CIA to contract with criminals in pursuing suspected terrorists and permitting the CIA to conduct assassinations overseas when pursuing suspected terrorists.

However, most people drew the line against allowing the government to monitor their own emails and phone calls (77% opposed this). And while 29% supported the establishment of internment camps for legal immigrants from unfriendly countries during times of tension or crisis – along the lines of those in which thousands of Japanese American citizens were confined during World War II – 57% opposed such a measure.

It was clear that from the public’s perspective, the balance between protecting civil liberties and protecting the country from terrorism had shifted. In September 2001 and January 2002, 55% majorities said that, in order to curb terrorism in the U.S., it was necessary for the average citizen to give up some civil liberties. In 1997, just 29% said this would be necessary while 62% said it would not.

For most of the next two decades, more Americans said their bigger concern was that the government had not gone far enough in protecting the country from terrorism than said it went too far in restricting civil liberties.

The public also did not rule out the use of torture to extract information from terrorist suspects. In a 2015 survey of 40 nations, the U.S. was one of only 12 where a majority of the public said the use of torture against terrorists could be justified to gain information about a possible attack.

Concerned about a possible backlash against Muslims in the U.S. in the days after 9/11, then-President George W. Bush gave a speech to the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., in which he declared: “Islam is peace.” For a brief period, a large segment of Americans agreed. In November 2001, 59% of U.S. adults had a favorable view of Muslim Americans, up from 45% in March 2001, with comparable majorities of Democrats and Republicans expressing a favorable opinion.

This spirit of unity and comity was not to last. In a September 2001 survey, 28% of adults said they had grown more suspicious of people of Middle Eastern descent; that grew to 36% less than a year later.

Republicans, in particular, increasingly came to associate Muslims and Islam with violence. In 2002, just a quarter of Americans – including 32% of Republicans and 23% of Democrats – said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its believers. About twice as many (51%) said it was not.

But within the next few years, most Republicans and GOP leaners said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence. Today, 72% of Republicans express this view, according to an August 2021 survey.

Democrats consistently have been far less likely than Republicans to associate Islam with violence. In the Center’s latest survey, 32% of Democrats say this. Still, Democrats are somewhat more likely to say this today than they have been in recent years: In 2019, 28% of Democrats said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its believers than other religions.

The partisan gap in views of Muslims and Islam in the U.S. is evident in other meaningful ways. For example, a 2017 survey found that half of U.S. adults said that “Islam is not part of mainstream American society” – a view held by nearly seven-in-ten Republicans (68%) but only 37% of Democrats. In a separate survey conducted in 2017, 56% of Republicans said there was a great deal or fair amount of extremism among U.S. Muslims, with fewer than half as many Democrats (22%) saying the same.

The rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in the aftermath of 9/11 has had a profound effect on the growing number of Muslims living in the United States. Surveys of U.S. Muslims from 2007-2017 found increasing shares saying they have personally experienced discrimination and received public expression of support.

It has now been two decades since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and the crash of Flight 93 – where only the courage of passengers and crew possibly prevented an even deadlier terror attack.

For most who are old enough to remember, it is a day that is impossible to forget. In many ways, 9/11 reshaped how Americans think of war and peace, their own personal safety and their fellow citizens. And today, the violence and chaos in a country half a world away brings with it the opening of an uncertain new chapter in the post-9/11 era.

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Seven Reflections Worth Reading About 9/11

Tomorrow is the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Not surprisingly, the last several weeks have seen the publication of a torrent of articles assessing the meaning and lessons of 9/11. It’s a topic that has been debated for twenty years and will continue to be debated for decades to come. The lessons that get drawn will inevitably change over time, just as we see 9/11 differently today than we did a decade ago. We inevitably see the past through the lens of the present.

With so much being written in so short a period of time, we can’t say that we have read everything that has been written, or claim to be able to say which essays will have the greatest or most lasting influence. What we offer below are simply seven articles that tackle critical questions and might give you reason to pause and think. You won’t see any articles written by our CFR colleagues. That’s because our rule for these posts is to avoid home-cooking. We no doubt have missed some terrific writing that would have made generating a list of seven articles even harder. To everyone who feels overlooked, we apologize.

United States

Bryan Bender and Daniel Lippman , " They Created Our Post-9/11 World: Here’s What They Think They Got Wrong ,”  Politico Magazine . Did I get it right? It’s a question we can all usefully ask of ourselves, even if we may not like the answer. Bender and Lippman interviewed a range of former senior Bush administration officials, U.S. senators, ambassadors, generals, and admirals about the decisions they made or helped shape in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Many of them look back with regret at what they see as U.S. “overreach” but hold out hope that the country can right itself. “Nations are like people,” retired Admiral James Stavridis notes, “They get some things right, they get some things wrong. The measure of any nation is whether it learns both from the mistakes and the successes.”

The Water's Edge

James m. lindsay  analyzes the politics shaping u.s. foreign policy and the sustainability of american power.  2-4 times weekly., daily news brief, a summary of global news developments with cfr analysis delivered to your inbox each morning.  weekdays., the world this week, a weekly digest of the latest from cfr on the biggest foreign policy stories of the week, featuring briefs, opinions, and explainers. every friday., think global health.

A curation of original analyses, data visualizations, and commentaries, examining the debates and efforts to improve health worldwide.  Weekly.

Garrett Graff ,   " After 9/11, the U.S. Got Almost Everything Wrong ,"  The Atlantic . By one important measure the U.S. war on terrorism succeeded: neither al-Qaeda nor any other foreign terrorist organization has successfully launched an attack remotely approaching what happened on 9/11. Beyond that, Osama bin Laden and many of his close advisers have been captured or killed.   Garrett Graff argues that despite these successes, the U.S. response to 9/11 did more harm than good. “By almost any other measure, the War on Terror has weakened the nation,” he writes, “leaving Americans more afraid, less free, more morally compromised, and more alone in the world."

Hannah Hartig and Carroll Doherty , “ Two Decades Later, the Enduring Legacy of 9/11 ,” Pew Research Center. What do Americans think about 9/11 twenty years on? Hartig and Doherty sort through data the Pew Research Center has compiled on public attitudes toward the deadliest day in U.S. history. They conclude that surveys show “how a badly shaken nation came together, briefly, in a spirit of sadness and patriotism; how the public initially rallied behind the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, though support waned over time; and how Americans viewed the threat of terrorism at home and the steps the government took to combat it.”

Nelly Lahoud , “ Bin Laden’s Catastrophic Success ,”  Foreign Affairs . Did bin Laden succeed? Nelly Lahoud thinks not. While the 9/11 attacks inflicted a grievous wound on the United States, they did not produce the outcome he sought. Bin Laden thought the attacks would compel a fearful United States to withdraw its military forces from Muslim-majority countries, leaving al-Qaeda free to recreate an exclusive community of Muslims. What he got instead was a United States that stood up rather than backed down in response to his plot, intervening even more deeply in the Middle East. “Bin Laden did change the world,” she concludes, “just not in the ways that he wanted.”

Carlos Lozada , “ 9/11 Was a Test. The Books of the Last Two Decades Show How America Failed. ”  Washington Post . If you read our post on  Seven More Books to Read About 9/11 , you know that a vast literature now exists on 9/11, examining that day and its consequences from an array of angles. Carlos Lozada, the  Washington Post ’s terrific book critic, decided to read more than his fair share of them. The effort convinced him that “Bin Laden did not win the war of ideas. But neither did we. To an unnerving degree, the United States moved toward the enemy’s fantasies of what it might become—a nation divided in its sense of itself, exposed in its moral and political compromises, conflicted over wars it did not want but would not end….. al-Qaeda could not dim the promise of America. Only we could do that to ourselves.”  

George Packer , “ 9/11 Was a Warning of What Was to Come ,”  The Atlantic.  It may be difficult from the vantage point of 2021 to remember what the world looked like in early September 2001. The United States had won the Cold War. It was the world’s dominant power by far, perhaps the most powerful ever known. The laws of history had seemingly been suspended. The future promised continued success, wealth, and safety for decades to come. Looking back at those heady times, Packer concludes that 9/11 pricked the illusion that somehow Americans stood outside of time. “September 11 wasn’t a sui generis event coming out of a clear blue sky,” he writes. “It was the first warning that the 21st century would not bring boundless peace and prosperity.”

Stephen M. Walt . “ How 9/11 Will Be Remembered a Century Later ,”  Foreign Policy.  We noted above that our collective lessons of 9/11 are likely to change over time as the progress of events gives us new vantage points from which to see the past. Harvard Kennedy School of Government Professor Stephen Walt wondered what people might make of 9/11 on its centennial. He sees three possible scenarios: people might see it as a turning point, an isolated tragedy, or as irrelevant. Which of those scenarios carries the day, he writes, is not pre-ordained but rather depends on “what the United States and others do from this day forward.”

On Monday we will share additional resources on 9/11 that friends and readers politely (for the most part) noted that we missed.

Here are the other entries in this series:

• More Resources Worth Exploring About 9/11

Seven Documentaries Worth Watching About 9/11

• Seven Movies Worth Watching About 9/11
• 9/11 Online Exhibits and Resources Worth Viewing
• Seven Resources Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories
• Seven Podcasts Worth Listening to About 9/11
• Seven More Books Worth Reading About 9/11 and Its Aftermath

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How 9/11 Changed the World

The World Trade Center buildings in New York City collapsed on September 11, 2001, after two airplanes slammed into the twin towers in a terrorist attack. Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

BU faculty reflect on how that day’s events have reshaped our lives over the last 20 years

Bu today staff.

Saturday, September 11, 2021, marks the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the largest terrorist attack in history. On that Tuesday morning, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four American commercial flights destined for the West Coast and intentionally crashed them. Two planes—American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175—departed from Boston and Flight 11 struck New York City’s World Trade Center North Tower at 8:46 am and Flight 175 the South Tower at 9:03 am, resulting in the collapse of both towers. A third plane, American Airlines Flight 77, leaving from Dulles International Airport in Virginia, crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37 am, and the final plane, United Airlines Flight 93, departing from Newark, N.J., crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pa., at 10:03 am, after passengers stormed the cockpit and tried to subdue the hijackers.

In the space of less than 90 minutes on a late summer morning, the world changed. Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day and the United States soon found itself mired in what would become the longest war in its history, a war that cost an estimated $8 trillion . The events of 9/11 not only reshaped the global response to terrorism, but raised new and troubling questions about security, privacy, and treatment of prisoners. It reshaped US immigration policies and led to a surge in discrimination, racial profiling, and hate crimes.

In observance of the anniversary, BU Today reached out to faculty across Boston University—experts in international relations, international security,  immigration law, global health, terrorism, and ethics—and asked each to address this question: “How has the world changed as a result of 9/11?”

Find a list of all those with ties to the BU community killed on 9/11 here.

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Comments & Discussion

Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

There are 43 comments on How 9/11 Changed the World

this is very scary to me.

Yes this is very scary

This was a very sad moment in time but we need to remember the people that sacrificed themselves to save us and the people that died during this event. It was sad but at least it brought us closer together. I wonder what the world would be like if 9/11 never happened?..

Yes that is a good thing to rember…

We will all remember 9/11, a very important moment in our life, and we honor the ones who sacrificed their lives to save others in there.

It changed the world forever, it is infact a painful memory to remember

I feel bad for all the families that had family and friends die.

i feel bad for all the people and their family and friends that died

9/11 is tragic and it will always be remembered though I have to say that saying 9/11 changed the word is quite an overstatement. More like how it changes America in certain ways and the ones responsible for it but saying something like what you said makes it sound like it was Armageddon or something.

Whether or not those of us in other countries like it, for the last several decades and certainly still in the current time, when something changes the USA in significant ways that impact policy, legislation, education, the economy, health care, etc. (not to mention the ways in which public opinion drives the American political machine), the US’s presence on the international stage means those changes ripple outward through their foreign policy, treatment of both residents/citizens of the USA and local people where the USA has a military, economic and/or other presence around the world.

The complex web of international agreements, alliances, organizational memberships, and financial interdependency means that events that happen locally often have both direct and indirect implications, short and long term, around the world, for individuals and for entire segments of society.

As for the direct results of 20 years of military response to 9/11 on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, it certainly changed their world.

The original BU 9/11 Memorial webpage is still up: https://www.bu.edu/remember/index.html

Reading through the remembrances from that day onward …

Omg scary .

I honor them all.

I wonder how much time people had to get out before the building collapsed

the south tower collapsed in 10 seconds.

Yes but it didnt colapse untill 56 minutes after it was hit

Shall all the people who risked their lives, never be forgotten.

am i blind or was there no mention of how it actually affected the world afterwards??

I know right?

My dad died in 9/11, He was a great pilot

Wow. I’m really sorry for your loss I hope you can still go far in life even without your dad. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut and let them go.

i dont really think you understood that comment

i just read the story and im so sade for the dad that died . If i was there i wouls of creiyed and i saw someone in the chare that someone dad died and i felt so bad when i saw the comment but i dont know if that is real but if it is i feal bad for you if my dad died or my mom i woulld been so sade i would never get over it but this story changed my life when i read it.Also 1 thing i hoop not to any dads diead because i feel bad fo thos kids.

yo all the dads and moms died all of them will never get forgoten every single one of them

Never forget, always remember

everyone is talking about the twin towers but what about the pentagon.

I know, right?

it is super scary

Sorry for all the people who Lost their family

Thanks for helping me with this report, and yes so sorry for all yall who lost family

So, so sorry to all y’all who lost family

I am deeply sorry for anyone who lost family, friends, co workers, or anybody you once knew. This really was a tragedy to so many.

my dad almost died from the tower

very scary but needs too be remembered!

I have to say this is most definitely a U.S. American write up. Saying the word is an overstatement in many ways. It would be more better if you were to specifically point out you mean the US and those others involved with the attacks. Overall if we are going to be completely factual “people/individuals” are the ones who change things depending on whatever. The world changes every day since the start of time.

While I agree with your first point, I would say that the attacks did in fact change the world. At the very least, they changed the way airline security is done everywhere.

great article,

I believe that the people, who sacrificed their lives in flight 93, the one that crashed in Pennsylvania, resonated the most with me, as it could have gone anywhere, and they sacrificed themselves to save more. I am deeply sorry for all losses, but I hope we remember this crucial moment in history to learn from our mistakes in global affairs, but also honor those who sacrificed themselves in all the attacks.

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Shock, insecurity and endless war: How 9/11 changed America and the world

Terror attacks damaged our psyches, and the response undermined U.S. moral authority, Berkeley scholars say

By Edward Lempinen

September 9, 2021

Choking on fumes and covered in dust, a woman and a man make their way to safety after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. (Wikipedia photo by Don Halasy)

For tens of millions of Americans alive on Sept. 11, 2001, the images are indelible: Flames exploding from a tower of the World Trade Center against a brilliant blue sky. A tsunami of smoke and debris roiling through the canyons of Lower Manhattan. Office workers — those who managed to escape — covered in grey dust.

In the shock that followed those terror attacks, it was common to imagine that the world had changed forever. Just how, exactly, no one could know. Twenty years later, after so many other turns of history, the ragged withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan is a reminder of how the nation has struggled to answer the attacks.

Janet Napolitano (UC Berkeley photo)

“One of the most lasting impacts has been the damage to the American psyche,” said Janet Napolitano, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and former president of the University of California. “Even after Pearl Harbor, there was a presumption that we were somehow immune from attack, that our airliners would not be weaponized and flown into iconic buildings. That sort of presumption was effectively destroyed by 9/11 — and it hasn’t come back.”

Even as Americans grappled with trauma and anger at home, the attacks cleared the way for a foreign policy based on the belief that the United States can “transform foreign societies in its own self-image,” said UC Berkeley historian Daniel Sargent. This was “hubris,” Sargent said, with the “consequence of exploding the credibility of America as a superpower.”

Daniel Sargent (Photo courtesy of UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy)

To be sure, the American reaction to Sept. 11 achieved a critical aim: After a massive mobilization of resources, intelligence and military power, the U.S. has prevented any other large-scale attack on domestic targets. Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 mastermind, was found and killed. The war in Iraq, though ill-conceived and fatally mismanaged, removed Saddam Hussein, a vicious tyrant, from power. A generation of women and girls in Afghanistan found that with the Taliban banished, there was space for education, for work and for pursuing dreams.

In a series of interviews, Berkeley scholars said the shock and the national response set off a cascade of repercussions — misguided and expensive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a rise in anti-Muslim hate, and an obsessive focus on security and safety that has sometimes undermined freedom and human rights.

Asked to reflect on the 20th anniversary of the attacks, they pointed to four broad, specific examples of how 9/11 continues to shape America and the world, plus a fifth that may — or may not — come to pass.

The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside of Washington, D.C., deeply shocked and angered America — and led political leaders to overreact in response, Berkeley scholars say. (Flickr photo by Robert J. Fisch)

1. Policymakers implemented aggressive plans to combat global terrorism — and to prevent “contamination” of the homeland.

Marika Landau-Wells (Photo by Aidan Milliff)

In a period of major conflict, two primal fears can become pronounced, said Marika Landau-Wells, a UC Berkeley political scientist who studies how political leaders and the public perceive threats. One is fear of death. The other is fear of contamination. These fears colored the U.S. response to communism in the 1950s and to COVID-19 and illegal immigration today.

In the psychological environment that rose from the shock of 9/11, the Bush administration had support to make a dramatic response.

“They didn’t want more people to die on their watch,” said Landau-Wells. “But there was also a sense that…this ideology of international terrorism had some contaminant properties to it. It’s a little bit like communism in that respect.”

With unprecedented speed, the Bush administration transformed the national security system. Airline security was tightened and intensified. The Department of Homeland Security was created a little more than a year after the attacks, and today is the third-largest federal agency.

At the same time, U.S. foreign policy was “remilitarized,” said Berkeley political scientist George Breslauer, a scholar in U.S. foreign affairs. “After 9/11, with the neoconservatives in power, you get this notion: ‘We are the most powerful country in the world, and it’s about time to show our adversaries what that means.’”

U.S. military personnel carry the remains of fellow service members killed in the Aug. 26 Kabul airport attack, just days before the U.S. completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by 1st Lt. Mark Andries)

2. Political leaders bet that terrorism could be defeated by conventional military action. This was a grave miscalculation.

Hatem Bazian

Several Berkeley scholars shared a common view: The U.S. could have responded to 9/11 as if it were a crime — using law enforcement, diplomacy and intelligence along with limited military resources to hunt down Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida leaders and others linked to the attacks.

“If you want to pursue the terrorists, there are different approaches and strategies to undertake this in a legal, legitimate way rather than unleash an invasion that is going to be disastrous,” said Hatem Bazian, founder of the UC Berkeley Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project.

George Breslauer (UC Berkeley photo)

Added Breslauer: “Trying to fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while simultaneously conducting a global police action against terror — it only brought us misery and pain.”

The death toll: Some 15,000 U.S. soldiers and military contractors died, along with some 15,000 allied military personnel. Among Afghans and Iraqis, deaths mounted into the hundreds of thousands.

The financial cost: By one estimate, the U.S. has spent more than $8 trillion — much of it borrowed — in wars launched after 9/11.

In Vietnam, the U.S. learned through failure that “conventional military deterrence…doesn’t work against insurgencies in guerilla war contexts,” Breslauer said. By repeating that approach against Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. “affirmed that it had unlearned the lessons of Vietnam — and that was triggered by 9/11.”

3. The attacks provoked a wave of anti-Muslim bias, harassment and violence. This demonization has become a persistent feature of our politics.

Incidents of torture by U.S. military and intelligence officials at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq deeply damaged the U.S. effort to promote democracy in the region, Berkeley scholars said. (Photo from U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command via Wikipedia)

In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks, society focused indiscriminate rage on Muslims, several scholars said.

“To tar a whole group of people with that brush is a big move, but I think 9/11 gave permission to think that way,” said Landau-Wells. “There was a tolerance for a kind of thinking that probably would have been frowned upon on Sept. 9th or 10th.”

Hate crimes against Muslims , or those mistaken for Muslims, soared. Law enforcement agencies detained thousands of men who were Middle Eastern and South Asian. Agents infiltrated Arab American communities. In Iraq and in the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the images of U.S. military personnel abusing and torturing Muslim men suggested that Muslims had been officially dehumanized.

While some Americans recoiled, others did not. In a climate of suspicion and fear, Berkeley scholars said, hostility for Muslims became a political wedge issue.

Critics attacked a rising 2008 presidential candidate by his full name: Barack Hussein Obama. After Obama’s victory, future presidential candidate Donald Trump led a sustained conspiracy movement claiming that the victor wasn’t American, and was therefore not a legitimate president.

Lawrence Rosenthal

Later, as the Republican nominee, Trump would promote the lie that thousands of Muslims on 9/11 cheered the fall of the twin towers at the World Trade Center. And as president, he largely suspended tourism, business and academic visits from Muslim countries.

“Islamic terrorism, quote unquote, replaced communism as the great foreign enemy,” observed Lawrence Rosenthal, chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies . “And those who were not hostile to the domestic Muslim population — they could be characterized as enemies on the home front.”

4. Through strategic failures and compromised values, the United States suffered deep, long-term damage to its political and moral authority.

The stated goals in both Afghanistan and Iraq seemed straightforward: topple authoritarian governments seen as hostile and replace them with functional democratic states, and thereby make the region less hospitable to terrorists. But Iraq wasn’t even linked to terrorism. And the use of detention without trial, kidnapping and torture undermined U.S. claims to democratic virtue.

“The use of what was euphemistically called ‘ enhanced interrogations ,’ which most people would call torture, was really contrary to our values — and it was not effective,” said Napolitano, now director of the Center for Security in Politics at Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. “Those kinds of decisions not only change our self-perception, but change the perception of the United States in the world.”

The invasion of Iraq “completely torpedoed and collapsed U.S. standing” in the Muslim countries and much of the world, said Bazian. “U.S. power has diminished tremendously in the most important powers — the power of persuasion.

“Once the Abu Ghraib pictures came out, the Abu Ghraib torture, the United States’ claim that it represents the civilized world, the rule of law — at that point, the emperor had no clothes.”

5. Can the U.S. accept the humbling lessons of 9/11? Time will tell.

The world has transformed in the two decades since the terror attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. The United States is no longer the world’s sole superpower; China is a rival, and Russia remains a global force. India and other nations once considered poor and powerless are building strength.

In the last days before U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan, a throng of Afghans hoping to escape waited for evacuation behind a cordon of U.S. Marines at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Victor Mancilla)

The U.S. remains the world’s most powerful country, Breslauer said, but it cannot impose its will on the world. It must define its vital interests realistically, and then work with other powers to address global issues through diplomacy and cooperation.

“We have to search for a way to get the United States, Europe, Russia and China to collaborate on issues that all of them define as major threats,” he proposed. “Those issues can be global terror, or the avoidance of accidental nuclear launches. It can be pandemic control, or climate change. There are any number of issues on which those four entities — plus Japan and a few others — have a common stake in avoiding the worst outcomes.”

Bazian finds cause for optimism in the European fishing crews that have rescued refugees fleeing war and persecution, and in the church groups working to resettle refugees in the United States. But he sees that the U.S. military web still circles the globe, and he wonders whether the lesson has been learned.

In this new world, he and others suggested, hubris is no longer viable. Diplomacy, subtlety, cooperation — these are essential if the U.S. is to recover from the self-inflicted damage of 9/11.

“I think over time we can recover,” Napolitano said. “But we can only do it by action, by exhibiting to the world our values and how we practice them… You know, the world is a complex place, and we need to approach its complexity with a degree of humility.”

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Long Gone Day

The changing legacy of an attack that america has promised never to forget..

Everyone remembers 9/11 differently. Here in New York, it often depends on where you were when the planes struck the Twin Towers, the vantage point being the determining factor between a concussive fireball overhead and a wisp of smoke climbing into blue skies. These are memories that are evoked each time this anniversary comes around, as if to relive that terrible day is the surest means of remembering it properly.

But as we approach the 20th anniversary of 9/11, it has never been more apparent that a growing number of people do not remember it at all. Of the 13 American service members who were killed in an attack during the U.S.’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, a full five were only 20 years old themselves. Seven of the service members were toddlers or infants in 2001, and the oldest was 11 . Meanwhile, a retaliatory U.S. drone strike reportedly killed seven Afghan children, including two 2-year-olds who had no inkling of 9/11, let alone the war that has been waged in its name.

This is all to say that, even as the violence continues, 9/11 has passed out of remembrance and into history — the history of museums and textbooks and tales your parents tell. The hope of this collection of essays and criticism is that our perception of that day, along with its awful consequences, will only become clearer with distance.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cksyzg0ms001k3h6iv77xd2zm@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} Planning for the Worst  After the attacks, we had a chance to build the downtown that New York deserves. Two decades later, timidity and fear have us hemmed in at every turn.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cksz194ek000r3h6in14jrymu@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} The 9/11 Museum and Its Discontents A new documentary goes inside the battles that have riven the institution.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cksyzxrps00113h6i8a8knxp9@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} America’s Greatest Existential Threat Wasn’t Terrorism Frank Rich on the continuing fallout after 9/11.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/ckt0jbazw001d3h6i5aflhtvt@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} Reparations for Iraq America’s engagements in Iraq can best be described as a multidecade colonization.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/ckt1mochp000s3h6ir5nxniau@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} What Dead Prez Got Right About 9/11 The rap group represented an alternative vision of the Bush era.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/ckt33s999000t3h6ijcc0r7wt@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} How 9/11 Destroyed the Muslim Model-Minority Myth For people in my generation, the attacks inaugurated a new political consciousness.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/ckt4h7tu7000v3h6itb6s2k2q@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} I Thought 9/11 Was the End-Times. Literally.  This is what the attacks meant to those steeped in a biblical education.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/ckta62hc0000v3g6i23yv7seg@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} What 9/11 Did to the Democratic Party To this day, Democrats struggle with the fear of looking weak.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/ckta63zzh001d3g6i3wowxhbk@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} Bin Laden Won How the terrorist mastermind drew the U.S. into a war with its own ideals.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cktd1u73v000x3g6i4ah2xd5e@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} The Patriot Act and Me  As a kid, I tried out photography. Then the FBI searched my home.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cktd1ueed001g3g6i1jroh16m@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} ‘One Giant Nerve That You Were Afraid to Touch’  37 comedians remember their first time onstage after 9/11 and how the attacks changed comedy forever.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cktdaciua00103g6i06xbligc@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} 9/11 and the Rise of the (Unionized) Security Officer How a group of unsung heroes fought for better working conditions.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cktdh9oib00123g6iv0g9ks0h@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} The Woman in White  Twenty years after 9/11, a photographer searches for an elusive subject.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/ckted58pf00123g6i6r83ubxe@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} I Lost My Dad on 9/11. I’m Still Searching for Who He Was.  Twenty years later, I’ve started to find him outside of the tragedy that took his life.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cktfuvpps002h3g6iqbgeqz08@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} The Women Left Out of Post-9/11 Health Care The events of 9/11 made these women sick. Twenty years later, why are they still left out of the health coverage that was created for survivors?

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cktfuzaas00393g6i6c34jamb@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} The Persistent Outrage of Laura Poitras Twenty years after the “war on terror” began, the filmmaker behind a trilogy of post-9/11 documentaries remains profoundly angry.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cktfv13ym00403g6i62eg8yk6@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} The World Trade Center, Before, During, and After  Remembering architect Minoru Yamasaki through the afterlife of his most famous buildings.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cktfusg2s00153g6idguanmah@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} Escape From New York  The great maritime rescue of lower Manhattan on 9/11.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cktfuo5ky00143g6etov7qm80@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} Visiting the Visitors: Photographs at the 9/11 Memorial  Some tourists are more respectful than others.

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/ckthtcnb300183g6eqcbb8u2w@published"] em{font:32px/30px Egyptienne,Georgia,serif;font-style:normal} Where the Meaning of Flight 93 Can Never End  The national memorial was built to allow multiple interpretations.

. From the Archives:

[data-uri="nymag.com/intelligencer/_components/clay-subheader/instances/cktesy1e300133g6iiq4wcvsz@published"] em{font:32px/30px egyptienne,georgia,serif;font-style:normal} the encyclopedia of 9/11  on the 10th anniversary, we found ourselves asking: with all we now know, how to begin to address the enormity of the event.

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The legacy of 9/11: reflections on a global tragedy.

(Illustration by Michael S. Helfenbein)

Twenty years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the tragic consequences of that day continue to resonate across the world. On this somber anniversary, members of the Yale faculty reflect on the painful and complicated legacy of 9/11 and how the trauma of the event, which for a time created unity in the United States, has in the decades since led to a more divided nation and dangerous world.

Trauma, solidarity, and division

By Jeffrey Alexander Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Societies shift between experiences of division and moments of solidarity. It is collective trauma that often triggers such shifts.

When Osama Bin Laden organized acts of horrific mass murder against civilians on September 11, 2001, he declared that “the values of this Western civilization under the leadership of America have been destroyed” because “those awesome symbolic towers that speak of liberty, human rights, and humanity have… gone up in smoke.” What happened, instead, was that Americans recast the fearful destruction as an ennobling narrative that revealed not weakness, but the strength of the nation’s democratic core.

Before 9/11, American had been experiencing a moment of severe political and cultural division. In its immediate aftermath, the national community was united by feeling, marked by the loving kindness displayed among persons who once had been friends, and by the civility and solicitude among those who once had been strangers …

Read more from Jeffrey Alexander

No clean break

By Joanne Meyerowitz Arthur Unobskey Professor of History and professor of American studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, historians pointed to precedents: the surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor, say, and terrorist attacks — domestic and foreign — that had targeted civilians. They soon moved on to warnings against unnecessary and prolonged wars, with frequent reference to Vietnam, and to placing the security state within the long history of domestic surveillance, racial profiling, and violations of civil liberties. The common thread was that Sept. 11 did not represent a clean break with the past. It was not “one of those moments,” as The New York Times had claimed, “in which history splits” in two …

Read more from Joanne Meyerowitz

An embrace of profiling

By Zareena Grewal Associate professor American studies; ethnicity, race, and migration; and religious studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

In 2001, the New York City Police Department established a secret surveillance program that mapped and monitored American Muslims’ lives throughout New York City, and in neighboring states, including Connecticut. In 2011, journalists leaked internal NYPD documents which led to an outcry from public officials, activists, and American Muslim leaders who protested that such racial and religious profiling was not only an example of ineffective policing and wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars, but it collectively criminalized American Muslims. The leaked documents revealed that Yale’s Muslim Students Association was among the campus chapters targeted …

Read more from Zareena Grewal

A new outlet

By Paul Bracken Professor emeritus of management and political science, Yale School of Management

Following the Cold War, the U.S. foreign policy establishment was spoiling for another fight to overthrow tyranny. Yet there was no domestic support for such a war. Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait led to the first Gulf War. But the failure to end his regime left a good part of the establishment with a sense of unfulfilled destiny. These were the trends underway before 9/11. But there was no outlet to give them voice.

By linking a war on terror with a projection of our idea of democracy onto the Middle East, the attack on 9/11 provided that outlet …

Read more from Paul Bracken

A war game, gone terribly wrong

By Kishwar Rizvi Professor in the history of art, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

September 11, 2001, is a Tuesday. At 8:46 a.m. and 9:03 a.m., two hijacked planes fly into the towers of the World Trade Center. Six hours later, I give my first class of the year, in Street Hall. It is unclear how the afternoon will unfold, but as the class gathers, we find comfort in each other’s presence.

The unconditional empathy and bravery shown by my students that day 20 years ago is something I carry with me. It is a necessary requirement for studying and teaching about Islam today. Art and architecture, framed through social and political discourse, serve as important conduits for understanding the history and culture of the West and South Asia — the epicenter of the “War on Terror” launched soon after 9/11. I find clarity in the work of Shahzia Sikander and Lida Abdul, women artists from the region …

Read more from Kishwar Rizvi

For millions of refugees, the crisis continues

By Marcia C. Inhorn William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs; chair, Council on Middle East Studies

September 11 was a devastating event for the United States, causing the senseless deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans and the injury of more than 6,000 others. September 11 was also a tragedy for the Middle East, as the U.S. responded by initiating two wars, one in Afghanistan in 2001 and one in Iraq in 2003. These long-term and costly wars in the Middle Eastern region have killed thousands of innocent civilians and displaced millions of people.

Of the 26 million refugees and 80 million forcibly displaced people in the world today, the majority are from the Middle East, especially Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Indeed, we are now in the midst of an Afghan refugee crisis, the magnitude of which is yet to unfold …

Read more from Marcia C. Inhorn

The loss of history

By Eckart Frahm Professor of Near Eastern languages & civilizations, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

The events of 9/11 have led to actions on the part of the U.S. that have thoroughly transformed the Middle East. Unfortunately, despite an enormous investment of lives and money, the region remains deeply troubled. The world’s attention has been focused, for good reasons, on the political and humanitarian catastrophes that have befallen it. But for someone like me who is studying the civilizations of the ancient Near East, a particularly devastating aspect of the crisis has been its disastrous effect on the region’s cultural heritage …

Read more from Eckart Frahm

Tragedy for the world

By Samuel Moyn Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence and professor of history, Yale Law School

September 11 was a tragedy for America, but it prompted an American response that has been a tragedy for the world. After two decades of war, every place American force has touched has been made worse, with the risk of terrorism often exacerbated, and at the price of millions of lives and trillions of dollars.

More than this, even though Joe Biden has followed his two predecessors in withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, the authorities the American president has arrogated over two decades to send force abroad have not been reined in. Nor does the war on terror — as distinct from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that started it — seem likely to end in the foreseeable future …

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Teaching Ideas

10 Ways to Teach About 9/11 With The New York Times

Ideas for helping students think about how the Sept. 11 attacks have changed our nation and world.

By Nicole Daniels and Michael Gonchar

Sept. 11, 2001 , is one of those rare days that, if you ask most adults what they remember, they can tell you exactly where they were, whom they were with and what they were thinking. It is a day seared in memory. But for students who were born in a post- 9/11 world and have grown up in the aftermath, it is complex history that needs to be remembered, taught and analyzed like any other historical event.

Twenty years ago, four commercial planes were hijacked by operatives from the radical Islamist group Al Qaeda. One plane was flown into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., and two others were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. A fourth hijacked plane crashed in Shanksville, Pa. Almost 3,000 people died that day, including more than 400 emergency workers.

In the wake of those attacks, the United States initiated a global “war on terror” to destroy Al Qaeda — a campaign that expanded into decades-long wars in Afghanistan, Iraq (even though Iraq was not responsible for Sept. 11 ) and elsewhere. In the wake of Sept. 11, the United States changed in other fundamental ways as well, from increased police surveillance to a rise in Islamophobia .

Below, we provide a range of activities that use resources from The New York Times, including archival front pages and photographs, first-person accounts, and analysis pieces published for the 20th anniversary . But we also suggest ideas borrowed from other education organizations like the Choices Program , RetroReport , the 9/11 Memorial and Museum and the Newseum .

On Sept. 30, we are hosting a free event, featuring Times journalists, for students that will look at how Sept. 11 has shaped a generation of young people who grew up in its aftermath. Teachers and students can register here , and students can submit their own videos with questions, many of which we hope to feature during the live event.

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The Real Meaning of 9/11

Note: This essay is the introduction to The Atlantic 's special report on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. See more articles and videos  here .

What we saw on the morning of September 11, 2001 was evil made manifest. The terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (and tried to destroy the Capitol) claim to have been motivated by a theology of restoration -- a dream of restoring Islam to a position of global supremacy -- and by the politics of grievance. But something deeper undergirds these impulses: A compulsive need to murder one's way to glory. The stated goals of al Qaeda are flimsy excuses, meant to cover-up this ineluctable fact. The souls of men like Muhammad Atta and Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Osama bin Laden are devoid of anything but hate, and murder is what erupted from these voids.

Self-criticism is necessary, even indispensable, for democracy to work. But this decade-long drama began with the unprovoked murder of 3,000 people, simply because they were American, or happened to be located in proximity to Americans. It is important to get our categories straight: The profound moral failures of the age of 9/11 belong to the murderers of al Qaeda, and those (especially in certain corners of the Muslim clerisy, along with a handful of bien-pensant Western intellectuals) who abet them, and excuse their actions. The mistakes we made were sometimes terrible (and sometimes, as at Abu Ghraib and in the CIA's torture rooms, criminal) but they came about in reaction to a crime without precedent.

There are many people who still seem befogged by fallacies and delusions about the cause and meaning of 9/11. I am not referring to the "9/11 truthers," whose minds are warped in such a way as to render impossible the processing of observable reality. I mean, among others, terrorism's apologists, who argue that terror is a weapon of the weak, when it is in fact a weapon deployed against the weak.

Christine Lee Hanson, who was two years old and on her way to Disneyland with her parents when they died together aboard United Airlines Flight 175, springs to mind as a perfect example of the sort of person al Qaeda made its enemy. Imagine, for a moment, you are Marwan al-Shehhi, the lead hijacker of Flight 175. You see Christine Hanson among the passengers on the plane you had just hijacked -- a two-year-old child, seated on her father's lap -- and you fly the plane carrying this child into the South Tower of the World Trade Center anyway . Peter Hanson, Christine's father, was on the telephone with his own father, Lee, as the plane approached lower Manhattan. "I think they're going to try to crash this plane into a building," Peter told his father. "Don't worry, Dad. If it happens, it will be quick." Then, Peter said, "Oh, my God," and Lee Hanson watched on television as the plane flew into the tower.

Those who find the attacks of 9/11 explicable within the usual categories have engaged for several years now in a debate notable for its sterility. The debate is between those who argue that radical jihadists hate us for our freedoms and our modernity, and those who argue that they hate us for our policies. The answer, of course, is yes -- yes to both. But even this answer only scrapes at the truth, which is that it is hatred that precedes everything, the rationalizations and justifications and the elaborate scaffolding of ideology and theology al Qaeda erects around its sociopathic core.

Among the befogged we should include another class of putative intellectuals, those who argue that al Qaeda represents Islam's true face, and that 9/11 marked the latest round in a war for global supremacy between two competing civilizations. This is nonsense. On the one hand, it is too convenient to dismiss al Qaeda's worldview as a perversion of Islam. It represents a strand of Muslim thought; it has its sources in the texts. And mainstream Islam has shown itself at times to be without adequate defenses against al Qaeda theology.

But simply because al Qaeda represents one strain of thought in Islam does not mean it represents all strains of thought. Islam, like any great and complicated religion, contains a thousand streams. And Muslim Arabs in half-a-dozen countries have this year signaled their disapproval of al Qaeda's agenda by seeking the overthrow of dictators not the Bin Laden way -- through murder -- but through protest. I like to believe that Bin Laden, in his last year on earth, was a depressed man: He was forced to watch as Arabs by the millions ostentatiously rejected the path he had carved for them.

The existence of a thousand streams of Islam; the Arab revolts; the loathing of al Qaeda that has spread wide through the Muslim world (the majority of of Qaeda victims by now have been Muslim); none of this has convinced some in the West that we are not, in fact, engaged a clash of civilizations with Islam itself, that if there is a clash, it is taking place within Islam. Even certain presidential candidates in this country have sought to make a war where there is no war. George W. Bush was generally assiduous on this question; he visited a mosque just after the attacks to make the point that the U.S. was not Islam's enemy. His party today should follow his lead, and stop giving Bin Laden's heirs what they want. With the murderous sociopaths of al Qaeda there is no compromise, but we will only defeat al Qaeda with the cooperation of the great mass of Muslims, and we won't have their support if we demonize their faith.

Shortly after 9/11, I visited the father of Muhammad Atta, the ringleader of the hijackers, in Cairo. Muhammad al-Amir Atta, the father, told me that, against all evidence, his son was still alive, that it was the Mossad that had framed him. He was angry and aggressive, but also seemed gripped by melancholy, and I sensed he knew the truth: That his son was a mass murderer, and that he was dead. We spoke for a few minutes, and I asked him a question he answered as if it were theoretical. I asked, What would motivate your son to do such a thing to innocent people? He answered, "You can't be a human and do this thing. It's impossible."

That is the crucial truth of 9/11. Osama Bin Laden had gathered to him men who were devoid of love, and who found in al Qaeda a vehicle for expressing their hatred of humanity. On the 10th anniversary of the murderous rampage committed by soulless men, we should remember the victims, and count our own blessings, and recommit ourselves to the suppression of evil and the protection of the innocent.

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September 11 attacks summary

Know how the september 11 attacks by the islamic extremist group al-qaeda took place.

September 11 attacks , Series of airline hijackings and suicide bombings against U.S. targets perpetrated by 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda. The attacks were planned well in advance; the militants—most of whom were from Saudi Arabia—traveled to the U.S. beforehand, where a number received commercial flight training. Working in small groups, the hijackers boarded 4 domestic airliners in groups of 5 (a 20th participant was alleged) on Sept. 11, 2001, and took control of the planes soon after takeoff. At 8:46 am (local time), the terrorists piloted the first plane into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City . A second plane struck the south tower some 15 minutes later. Both structures erupted in flames and, badly damaged, soon collapsed. A third plane struck the southwest side of the Pentagon near Washington, D.C. , at 9:40, and within the next hour the fourth crashed in Pennsylvania after its passengers—aware of events via cellular telephone—attempted to overpower their assailants. Some 2,750 people were killed in New York, 184 at the Pentagon, and 40 in Pennsylvania. All 19 terrorists died.

September 11: Terror Attack and Huge Casualties Essay

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Tuesday September 11, was a dark moment in New York after a terror attack on the World Trade Centre which left more than 3000 neighbors, friends, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, children and parents dead. The cleverly orchestrated attacks inflicted huge casualties on the American citizens. U. S. Officials later identified the attacker as a Pakistani-born, Khalid Sheik Mohammed who was the mastermind behind the attacks.

The terrorist attacks occurred at 8:45am with the first of the two hijacked American Airlines striking the World Trade Centre. At 9:03am, the second airliner crashed into the twin towers, leaving the building crumbling and in a blaze. Many people were left trapped in the building for long hours while others died.

The third plane crashed at 9:43 am at the Pentagon which is the US military base and the largest office building in the world. The south tower, after the attack, broke and fell apart and five minutes later, the remaining part of the Pentagon came down. According to police sources, the fourth jet crashed into Western Pennsylvania killing more than 100 people.

The police and the emergency staff quickly rushed into the scene to rescue the survivors. In the World Trade Center, the workplace to more than 40,000 workers, people had reported to work as other days and those that were on the 106 th floor died instantly while the rest in other floors could not escape from fire. As the police and the emergency staff trying to help those at the World Trade Center, the South tower, collapsed and tumbled down killing hundreds of the police and emergency personnel.

After the attacks a state of emergency ensued and all the flights grounded and all US borders closed. There were fears everywhere that similar attacks could occur and as a result precautionary evacuations took place especially on national buildings.

The then president, George Bush, who was also the commander-in-chief of the Defense forces, was flown to a safe and secure base in Nebraska and he and his deputy president were kept in different locations.

He later addressed the attacks that though they had shaken the growth of big buildings in America they had not weakened the hardworking and zealous citizens of America. He further added that there was no difference between those who perpetrated the attack and those who gave them shelter and he urged them to co-operate in the fight against terrorism.

American Airlines told CNN that they had lost their two planes both in their way to Los Angeles, American Flight 11 from Boston carrying 81 passengers and 11 crew and American Flight 11, a Boeing 757 from Washington Dulles Airport to Los Angeles carrying 58 passengers and six crew and from the witnesses, it is the American Bin 757 that hit Pentagon.

Those behind the attacks were Islamic terrorists from Saudi Arabia managed by Osama Bin Laden, who had planned it for years. The hijackers of the Airliners were suicide bombers belonging to Al Qaeda.

The tragic attack on America has remained a historical representation and has reminded many to expect anything and to know that some occurrences are inevitable.

Its target was to destroy the World Trade Centre and to discipline the Americans as well as to impede the economy and damage United States’ reputation from the rest of the world.

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IvyPanda. (2018, June 7). September 11: Terror Attack and Huge Casualties. https://ivypanda.com/essays/september-11-2001/

"September 11: Terror Attack and Huge Casualties." IvyPanda , 7 June 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/september-11-2001/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'September 11: Terror Attack and Huge Casualties'. 7 June.

IvyPanda . 2018. "September 11: Terror Attack and Huge Casualties." June 7, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/september-11-2001/.

1. IvyPanda . "September 11: Terror Attack and Huge Casualties." June 7, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/september-11-2001/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "September 11: Terror Attack and Huge Casualties." June 7, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/september-11-2001/.

Primary Sources

This collection of primary sources was developed to help teachers engage students in a variety of key topics related to 9/11 and the War on Terror. The topics were developed as a result of our research into how 9/11 and terrorism are being taught in the US and what teachers needed to include perspectives often missing from textbooks and other curriculum sets. Therefore, we compiled primary source sets centered around key themes that emerged from our research and aligned with inquiry questions developed as part of our Teaching with Primary Sources project.

American Intelligence Failure

Perspectives of Muslim and Arab Americans

Rise of the TSA

September 11, 2001 - The Day of the Attacks 

Soviet & Afghan War

The Patriot Act

Veteran’s experiences.

Funding for this project was provided by The Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Midwest Region Grant Program.

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Never Forget: 5 Writing Prompts to Commemorate the 9/11 Events

Demme Learning · September 1, 2022 · 3 Comments

Although students today don’t have their own memories of the 9/11 events, it’s important that they learn about that day and its long-term effects. One of the best ways to remember and recognize the immense impact of September 11, 2001, is to write about it. Here are five writing prompts that you can use to get your students to reflect on this American tragedy.

1. Ripple Effect

You may be too young to remember the 9/11 events, but you’re certainly not immune to their ripple effect. Write about how the September 11th attacks continue to affect all Americans—even those who have no memory of that day.

The September 11th tragedy brought forth many heroes. Write about a hero or a heroic event that you have read about or observed in a documentary. If you need some inspiration, check out some of these hero stories:

7 Incredible Stories of Heroism on 9/11 Police Officer Moira Smith Rick Rescorla Saved 2,687 Lives on September 11

The Firemen of 9/11 ; History Documentary (38:45) The Town of Gander: Unlikely Hero of 9/11 ; Tom Brokaw (5:57) 9/11: The Man in the Red Bandanna ; ESPN (13:40)

3. A Different World

Much has changed in the years since 9/11. The events of that day impacted not only the United States, but the world as a whole. Do you think the world is more or less vulnerable today than in 2001? How have our freedoms been impacted? Write a paragraph explaining your thoughts.

4. Through Their Eyes

Interview a parent, grandparent, or other adult who remembers the tragedy of September 11, 2001. Ask about where they were or what they were doing when they found out about the attacks. How did they react? What are their feelings about 9/11 today? Assemble their responses into an essay or poem.

5. Gratitude Is an Attitude

September 11th is a hard day to think about. As we honor those who lost their lives on this day in 2001, make a list of at least 10 things in your life that you are thankful for and provide a brief explanation why.

The 9/11 events are an emotional topic to cover, and having students complete thoughtful writing can be a great way to learn about them. By exploring a variety of writing formats, students can better understand the importance of this historical day.

Reader Interactions

September 2, 2022 at 11:23 pm

Thank you for this! We must never forget!

September 10, 2022 at 10:29 pm

We will always remember 9/11 as a powerful day to others

September 11, 2023 at 3:27 pm

Remembering all lives lost that day. We will NEVER forget.

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Home — Essay Samples — Government & Politics — 9/11 — The Effects Of 9/11 Attack On America

The Effects of 9/11 Attack on America

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Sample essay on 9/11 world trade center attacks.

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On the morning of September 11, 2001,,, four airliners were hijacked by members of al-Qaeda who aimed to carry out suicide attacks against important targets in the United States. Of the four planes, one struck the Pentagon, one crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, and the two remaining planes were flown into the Twin Towers in New York City. Claiming almost three thousand lives, this event gave birth to a war and brought about everyday sociological changes for Americans. If you need help with writing or editing, consider working with a writer from Ultius. We have many advanced writer selection options to connect you with the expert you need.

Targeting the World Trade Center

The World Trade Center was a commercial complex in Manhattan spanning over sixteen acres and containing a large plaza, seven buildings, and an underground shopping mall connecting them. The plaza’s centerpiece was the Twin Towers. The towers each had one hundred and ten stories and, together, were the workplace of approximately thirty five thousand people and over four hundred companies (FAQ about 9/11). The daytime population, location, and sheer size of the towers (each weighed more than 250,000 tons (FAQ about 9/11)) made it an obvious choice for a terrorist attack. In addition, the towers were considered to embody Americans' influence and power (The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks). In fact, in 1993, there was an attack in which explosives were detonated in a car parked beneath the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring thousands.

The group targeting the World Trade Center (both in 1993 and in 2001) was al-Qaeda, an Islam extremist terrorist system started by Osama bin Laden. With franchise operations in at least sixteen other countries (McCormick), al-Qaeda seeks to overthrow Middle-Eastern governments or other places with strong Muslim representation that do not force religiously-sanctioned social and political order. The attacks on American soil were made in an attempt to reduce support in the United States for the ‘offending’ governments, which al-Qaeda saw as a huge obstacle in building a global order under Islam (FAQ about 9/11). In addition, they were angry over the American support of Israel, as well as their part in the Persian Gulf War and their strong military presence in Middle Eastern countries (9/11 Attacks).

What happened on 9/11

On September 11, 2001, four planes were headed for California when they were hijacked by members of al-Qaeda aboard the plane. Chosen because they would be adequately fueled for their journey, nineteen terrorists smuggled knives and box-cutters onto the planes and took over control shortly after departure (9/11 Attacks). The first was an American Airlines Boeing 767 leaving from Boston. The plane crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8:45 in the morning, leaving a smoking, fiery hole between the ninety third and ninety ninth floors (Schmemann). The impact killed hundreds of people and trapped hundred more in the floors above. People trapped by the damage and flames leaped off the side of the building to their deaths, desperate to escape (Weinberg). Evacuation began immediately, but eighteen minutes later, another Boeing 747, this one an United Airlines flight, sliced through the south tower between the seventy seventh and eighty fifth floors (9/11 Attacks). This crash caused a huge explosion, fueled by the planes’ full gasoline tanks. Both buildings collapsed and severely damaged five other buildings in the World Trade Center complex. The pile of ruins stretched seventeen stories high, a monument to the desolation caused by the attacks (FAQ about 9/11).

The two other planes involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks had slightly different routes. The first, an American Airlines Boeing 757 left the airport in Washington D.C., headed for Los Angeles. Once hijacked, the attackers steered the plane towards the Pentagon where they slammed into the west side of the building, workplace to twenty four thousand people (Schmemann). After learning about the other attacks, passengers on the fourth plane, United Airlines Boeing 757, Flight 93, decided to take matter into their own hands. Fighting back, the passengers were able to steer the plane from its original target, Washington D.C., and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, killing everyone aboard (September 11th Fast Facts).

Additional Reading: Explore the possible link between terrorists' motivations and free media .

The aftermath

All in all, almost three thousand people were killed from a total of ninety three nations. Over twenty seven hundred people were killed in the Twin Towers attack, one hundred eighty four were killed during the attack on the Pentagon, and forty people were killed on Flight 93 (FAQ about 9/11). In addition to the civilians and hijackers, three hundred and forty three firefighters and paramedics were killed, along with twenty three police officers and thirty seven Port Authority police officers. Only six people who were in the World Trade Center towers at the time of the collapse survived and almost ten thousand others were treated for injuries (9/11 Attacks). The death toll was beyond catastrophic and devastating to a nation.

On September 12, 2001, the United Nations held an emergency meeting, in which they condemned the terrorist act, stating that “a terrorist attack on one country was an attack on all humanity” (The U.S. and Int’l Response to 9/11). For the first time in the history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO decided to invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which states that an armed attack against one or more NATO countries is an attack against all NATO countries (The U.S. and Int’l Response to 9/11). The United States invoked their right of self-defense during wartime, meaning that a nation that has been threatened or attacked has the right to defend itself. The country was officially at war.

America's reaction

In America, Congress was busy. In October 2001, United States Congress passed the USA Patriot Act , giving law enforcement officials the right to searching property without warrants, detain and deport, monitor financial transactions, and eavesdrop on phone conversations (Rowen). This was met with mixed reviews, as many feared that the law would lead to overzealous infringement on civil liberties. Under the Patriot Act, approximately twelve hundred people were detained for a month without access to their attorneys (Rowen).

October 7, 2001 marked the start of an American-led international effort to overthrow the Taliban’s hold in Afghanistan in order to destroy bin Laden’s terrorist base there. Before the operation was two months old, the United States had ousted the Taliban from power. However, the war carried on and American troops fought to defeat a Taliban insurgency campaign over Pakistan (9/11 Attacks). It was later revealed in 2005 that in 2002, President George W. Bush authorized the National Security Agency in secret to wiretap domestic emails and phone calls without warrants (Rowen). The negative sentiment towards the Middle-East still exists, even years after this essay purchased online was published.

The United States also enacted the Department of Homeland Security Act of 2002, an act that created the position of Secretary of Homeland Security and established the Department of Homeland Security, a cabinet-level agency. The purpose of this department was to ensure the national security of the country, in addition to providing information about terrorist threats and suggested security measures for the public, the government, and hubs like airports (Rowen). Accomplishments of the Department of Homeland Security include training law enforcement to analyze threats and react accordingly, the launching of the ‘If You See Something Say Something’ campaign that encourages civilians to report suspicious behavior and activity, more in-depth screening of international passengers entering or leaving the United States, and the improvement of the country’s cyber infrastructure (Rowen). Some believe that the implementation of these laws encouraged the breaching of the basic rights and liberties of citizens and non-citizens alike. ( Read more about civil liberties and the right to privacy.) 

Life after 9/11

The war on terror.

There have been a number of effects on the everyday lives of Americans made by the 9/11 attacks on the United States. First of all, United States troops invaded Afghanistan less than a month after the World Trade Center attacks to release al-Qaeda’s grip on the Middle East. In 2003, the United States troops invaded Iraq, which was not directly related to the attacks but was an important weapon in the War on Terror (Green). In December 2011, troops were pulled from Iraq and the United States left them in a state of volatile democracy.

In 2014, President Obama aimed for our presence in Afghanistan to cease to be considered a combat mission, but rather a support mission. The Afghanistan war has been the longest war in United States history (Green). Between the years of 2001 and 2011, nearly two million United States troops were deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq, with six thousand troops having been killed and approximately forty four thousand wounded. More than 18% of returned servicemen suffer from depression or post-traumatic stress disorder and 20% suffer from traumatic brain injuries (Green).

Immigration and deportation 

Another effect made by the 9/11 World Trade Center attack has been the United States’ stance on immigration and deportation. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security meant the merging of twenty two other government agencies, including the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U.S. Customs Service. The department has streamlined deportation for criminals and law-breakers, leading to the number of deportations from the United States doubling (Green). Between the years of 2009 and 2010, deportation rates reached almost four hundred thousand people annually, with only half being convicted of a criminal offense and the majority of those being low-level offences.With the implantation of the Secure Communities program, the law, established in 2008, allows local law enforcement to check on the immigration status of any person booked in a jail, despite whether or not they are convicted of the crime they are accused of. This law has led to the deportation of people who were simply stopped for something as minor as not using a turn signal while driving (Green).

Airport security

Finally, another drastic change brought on by the terrorist attacks on America is the change in procedure at national airports. The Transportation Security Administration was created after the attacks to use new and more effective security practices at every commercial airport in the country. Before, passengers could arrive thirty minutes before their flight and not worry about making it to their gate in time. Now, fliers should be prepared to spend hours in line as each person, bag, and item of clothing is scanned, screened, and scrutinized. ( Learn more about the effects of 9/11 on airport security.) The TSA also uses a watch list of individuals who they believe may pose a threat to safety and security (Green). No one is safe from suspicion and must pass rigorous security checks to get clearance to fly.

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Moving forward

The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center left both Americans and international citizens alike shattered and fearful. Other countries felt that the attack on the United States had been an attack on freedom everywhere. On September 12, 2001, the headline of a French newspaper read, “Today, we are all Americans” (Reactions to 9/11). The Queen of England herself sang the American national anthem for the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, Rio de Janeiro hung billboards of the city’s Christ the Redeemer statue embracing the New York skyline, and billions was donated all around the world by means of money and goods to relief and rescue organizations. The rest of the world embraced America as we embarked on the greatest changes in our country’s recent history. The effects of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks still remain today, even with the resurrection of the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero, opened exactly ten years after the fateful morning. Though the terrorist attack on American soil shook the country to its core, and despite the fact that we remain entangled with the Middle East to this day, the United States of American has proven that liberty and freedom will continue to persevere, even in the most unlikely circumstances. 

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Works Cited

“9/11 Attacks”. History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2010. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. <http://www.history.com/topics/9-11-attacks>.

“FAQ about 9/11”. 9/11 Memorial. National September 11 Memorial & Museum, 2014. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. <http://www.911memorial.org/faq-about-911>.

Green, Matthew. “Three Lasting Impacts of 9/11”. The Lowdown. KQED News, 11 Sept. 2012. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. <http://blogs.kqed.org/lowdown/2012/09/11/911-turns-11-three-major-lasting-changes/>.

McCormick, Ty. “Al Qaeda Core: A Short History”. Foreign Policy. Foreign Policy, 17 March 2014. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. <http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/03/17/al_qaeda_core_a_short_history>.

 “Reactions to 9/11”. History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2010. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. <http://www.history.com/topics/reaction-to-9-11>.

Schmemann, Serge. “Hijacked Jets Destroy Twin Towers and Hit Pentagon”. The New York Times: On This Day. The New York Times, 12 Sept. 2001. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0911.html#article>.

“September 11th Fast Facts.” CNN. CNN Library, 8 Sept. 2014. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. <http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/27/us/september-11-anniversary-fast-facts/>.

 “The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks”. BBC History. BBC, 2014. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/events/the_september_11th_terrorist_attacks>.

 “The U.S. and Int’l Response to 9/11.” The Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation, 2014. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. <http://www.heritage.org/research/projects/enemy-detention/response-to-911>.

Weinberg, Jonathan. “What did it feel like to be inside the World Trade Center at the time of the 9/11 attacks?”. Quora. 23 Sept. 2014. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. <http://www.quora.com/What-did-it-feel-like-to-be-inside-the-World-Trade-Center-at-the-time-of-the-9-11-attacks>.

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Students Reflect on 9/11 in Essay Contest

First responders and supporters from the city of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. have once again sponsored an essay contest in which local students can reflect on their understanding of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

The second annual September 11th remembrance essay contest, which is open to Palm Beach Gardens residents and the dependents of city employees, requests that students in grades nine to 12 "reflect on how the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 affected our nation and the future of the world."

Building on their successful 2015 contest , the contest is being sponsored by the Palm Beach Gardens Police Foundation, Fire Chief’s Association of Palm Beach County and Palm Beach Gardens Fire-Rescue, according to the Palm Beach Post .

Essay submissions should be between 500 to 700 words and applications are due Aug. 15, 2016. Three winners will be chosen. 

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New video and documents revive questions about Saudi role in 9/11 attacks

A newly released video and other documents are reviving questions about whether a Saudi national who FBI officials believe worked for Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service played a role in the 9/11 attacks.

The Saudi national, Omar Al-Bayoumi, was the focus of years of investigation by the FBI's San Diego field office because of his association with two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, prior to the attack. 

The video, which was unsealed in federal court last week, was a self-narrated video that shows Al-Bayoumi giving a tour of landmarks in Washington, D.C. The video was shot over several days in 1999 and included videos of entrances, exits and security checkpoints in the U.S. Capitol.

Federal officials believe that 9/11 hijackers planned to crash one of the planes, United 93, into the U.S. Capitol before passengers stormed the cockpit and forced it to crash in rural Pennsylvania.

Al-Bayoumi’s video of Washington was first aired by CBS News last week. NBC News and a San Diego area publication reported the existence of the video soon after the 9/11 attacks. 

The video was one of the items investigators found in Al-Bayoumi’s apartment in the United Kingdom after the 9/11 attack. They also found a notepad of mathematical calculations related to flying an airplane and a video of a party in San Diego where the two hijackers and Al-Bayoumi were present. 

The disclosures prompted some former law enforcement officials and the families of some 9/11 victims to call for further investigation.  

“As a former FBI Special Agent who took part in the investigation of the 9-11 attacks (Flight 93), of which the majority of the terrorists were Saudi, I have so many questions here," William Evanina, who was head of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center during the Trump administration, posted on X this weekend. “Evidence is evidence. And it took a civil court case for the release?”

Evanina was referring to a lawsuit brought by the families of 9/11 victims after hundreds of pages of FBI documents were declassified and released in 2022. Attorneys representing the families filed lawsuits requesting that some of the underlying evidence used to create those FBI reports be released as well. 

Two FBI reports that were among the recently released documents say that Al-Bayoumi was believed to work for Saudi intelligence. “Reliable assets and other members of the San Diego Muslim community believe Al-Bayoumi works for the Saudi intelligence service,” one of the documents says. 

A separate FBI report describes Al-Bayoumi as a paid informant of the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency, known by the acronym GIP, and was paid a monthly stipend from the late 1990s to Sept. 11, 2001. Al-Bayoumi is believed to be living in Saudi Arabia.

A spokesperson for the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington said it was reviewing NBC News’ questions about Al-Bayoumi and his ties to Saudi Intelligence.

In late September 2001, the Metropolitan Police Service in the U.K. searched Al-Bayoumi’s apartment north of London and discovered the handwritten document that contained mathematical calculations related to flying airplanes. The handwriting specifically refers to planes and height. 

In a report, FBI agents say they had a theory that the document and associated equations could be used to “calculate the rate of descent when flying a plane” 

A pilot that FBI agents consulted in 2012 told them that the equations could be used to help fly a plane. “Given a distance from a target, the altitude at that location, and the current airspeed,” the pilot said, “one could calculate the rate of descent and plug it into the computer on the plane in order to initiate a descent to that target.” 

The pilot said he had doubts that someone with limited training could calculate the latitude and longitude and then use those calculations to fly a plane to a target from 35,000 feet. Given the clear weather on 9/11 and at an altitude of 8,000 to 10,000 feet, one could see for approximately 100 miles and use the waypoints on aviation maps and the plane’s autopilot to calculate the distance to certain points, the report says. 

The pilot apparently told the FBI that “when measuring the distance by hand between waypoints on these maps, one could be accurate” within half a nautical mile or better. 

The FBI report ends with: “REDACTED could not think of any other reason for the equation given the parameters set forth on the document than to calculate the descent rate from a given altitude.” 

Questions about whether al-Mihdhar and al-Hamzi were aided in San Diego have lingered for years. Both spoke little English and had no ties to the United States. Al-Bayoumi was seen with them on several occasions, according to the 9/11 Commission report and follow-up FBI reports. 

Tom Winter is a New York-based correspondent covering crime, courts, terrorism and financial fraud on the East Coast for the NBC News Investigative Unit.