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—— ON THIS DAY ——
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
New York City, Arlington, and Shanksville, USA
25 years ago
The September 11 attacks of 2001, in which four hijacked airliners were used to strike the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing nearly three thousand people.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four passenger aircraft on domestic flights within the United States. At 8:46 a.m. the first was flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. At 9:03 a.m., with cameras already trained on the burning building, the second struck the South Tower. At 9:37 a.m. a third hit the Pentagon outside Washington. The fourth, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03 a.m., after passengers who had learned by phone what was happening attempted to retake the aircraft.
Both towers collapsed, the South Tower at 9:59 a.m. and the North at 10:28 a.m., in full view of a global television audience. Nearly three thousand people were killed, including the passengers and crew of all four aircraft, workers and visitors in the buildings, and 412 emergency responders who had gone into the towers as everyone else was coming out. It was the deadliest attack ever carried out on American soil and the deadliest incident for firefighters in the country's history.
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
The World Trade Center in New York, whose twin towers were destroyed in the attacks and whose site has since been rebuilt with a memorial to those killed.
The attacks were planned and carried out by al-Qaeda, the network led by Osama bin Laden. American airspace was closed within hours, stranding travellers worldwide and diverting hundreds of international flights to Canadian airports, where small towns took in thousands of strangers for days. The New York Stock Exchange stayed closed for four trading days, the longest such closure since 1933.
The response reshaped American government and foreign policy. The United States invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 to remove the Taliban government sheltering al-Qaeda, beginning a war that lasted twenty years. The Department of Homeland Security was created, the largest reorganization of the federal government since the 1940s. The Transportation Security Administration took over airport screening, and the experience of air travel changed permanently. The Patriot Act expanded surveillance powers in ways that remain contested. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, justified in part by claims about weapons of mass destruction that proved false, followed from the same shift in policy and thinking.
The consequences continue to unfold. Bin Laden was killed by American forces in Pakistan in May 2011. The Afghan war ended in 2021 with the Taliban back in power. Detention at Guantanamo Bay, the use of torture in interrogations, and the scope of state surveillance became long-running arguments about what a democracy may do when it is frightened. In New York, the site was rebuilt, and a memorial of two reflecting pools sits in the footprints of the towers, inscribed with the names of the dead. Thousands of responders and survivors have since fallen ill from the dust, and the toll continues to rise a quarter of a century later.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
It reordered American foreign policy for a generation. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, two decades of counter-terrorism operations, and the strategic priorities of the United States all flow from the response to that morning, with consequences still visible across the Middle East and Central Asia.
It changed the relationship between security and liberty in Western democracies. Expanded surveillance, indefinite detention, and new screening regimes were adopted quickly and have proved difficult to reverse, leaving a permanent argument about what freedoms are worth trading for safety.
Its human toll is still growing. Beyond the nearly three thousand killed that day, thousands of firefighters, police, and residents have since developed illnesses linked to the dust from the collapse, and health programs for survivors remain an ongoing public obligation.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
On September 11, 2001, four hijacked aircraft killed nearly three thousand people in New York, at the Pentagon, and in a Pennsylvania field. The towers fell on live television. Two wars, a new federal department, and a permanently altered understanding of security followed, and the number of people dying from that day's dust is still climbing.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
“Let's roll.”
— Todd Beamer, a passenger aboard United Flight 93, before the attempt to retake the aircraft
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about the September 11 attacks, the timeline of that morning, the passengers of Flight 93, and the political and legal changes that followed?
