Sept. 11, 2001.
The day sent shockwaves across the United States. It will be remembered as one of those “where were you?” moments, along with the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy, JFK’s assassination, the Pearl Harbor attack.
The event held different meanings for various generations. It will be learned about in the classrooms for Gen Zers. Many Millennials may distantly remember the tragedy. The Sept. 11 attacks compelled many Gen Xers into military service. For Baby Boomers, Silent Generation and the Greatest Generation, it echoed previous chapters in American history.
The attacks reverberated around the globe. The fatalities weren’t Americans alone — 40 countries lost citizens in the attack.
9/11 reshaped U.S. counterterrorism and transformed the relationship between law enforcement and intelligence communities. Both were prohibited from sharing information and/or collaborating via a legal and procedural mechanism called “The Wall” prior to the event. The post-9/11 USA Patriot Act removed the data sharing-cooperation barriers.
The tragedy also resulted in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, further refining America’s counterterrorism approach. A strong possibility exists the scale of the 9/11 attacks might have been significantly reduced if the FBI, NSA, CIA and other agencies with knowledge of the various attackers had been allowed to freely exchange information.
We will never know if a hypothetical sharing would have identified the entire plot. It will not surprise me if the country doesn’t learn of various disrupted Al Qaeda and other militant Islamist groups operations directed at U.S. territory at some point in the next several decades.
The attack had additional domestic effects. It unified Americans in a manner not seen in decades. It also witnessed the emergence of the country’s Islamic community onto America’s political scene.
The tragedy unified the country for a brief period. There is a not a single time within the past several decades, except World War II, when Americans set aside their differences and focused on the country’s betterment.
A sadness permeated the period, a sadness emanating from the realization that many of the country’s socio-economic-political issues could easily be resolved if we exercised the same type of unity toward those various controversies as what followed the 9/11.
Instead? We are now a nation beset by polarization. It’s as if the post 9/11 unity is but an echo, and that’s a shame.
A third effect is the emergence of the American Islamic community as a political force. The country’s Muslims came under intense scrutiny following the attack. The event brought to light key aspects of the Islamic faith into the U.S. political lexicon — such as “jihad” and “Sharia law,” for instance. These terms’ true meanings were distorted by a tiny fraction of Islamist zealots.
Muslims are gradually starting to have a similar experience as other ethnic-religious groups that have immigrated to the United States over the decades. Their beliefs are misunderstood and ridiculed at first, but accepted over time.
Those same groups ascend into the American political, economic, and social ranks over time. We are witnessing the pattern now. Several key policymakers have surfaced within the group’s ranks, including Zohran Mamdani, Rashida Tlaib, Illhan Omar.
The 9/11 attacks instigated several key international events. The most notable entailed the activation of NATO’s Article 5, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, along with a global dragnet against Al Qaeda, its affiliates and other militant Islamist groups. The event resulted in the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Afghanistan conflict’s immediate objective was the elimination of Al Qaeda’s training camps and the Taliban’s removal as the country’s caretakers. The conflict ended after a hasty American/NATO withdrawal left the same government Washington had overthrown the Taliban.
The Iraq War was based on false claims of a connection between the 9/11 attacks and Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, plus the existence of an alleged weapons of mass destruction program. American forces withdrew years after toppling the Hussein regime. The operation resulted in the deaths of over 4,000 solders, Marines, and other servicemen. It also witnessed an insurgency emerging from the collapse of the Iraqi government. The same insurgency led to the creation of ISIS and a Syrian-based Al Qaeda offshoot still in existence.
Sept. 11 is now a day most Americans moatly carry on as usual. A meeting will happen, lunches planned, a vacation squeezed in someplace. For those who remember the occasion — especially the relatives of nearly 3,000 Americans and others across the globe who lost a loved one — 9/11 will remain a day of pause, reflection and remembrance for the remainder of their lives.
Matthew Kennedy is a doctoral candidate in politics and international studies at the University of Warwick in Great Britain.