SEPTEMBER 2023:

A DAY IMPRINTED ON THE AMERICAN SOUL…

September 11, 2001, was my generational John F Kennedy assassination, I say this in comparison because in Psychology the event is used to mark a traumatic period in time where a mass amount of people can remember what they were doing at the moment the event occurred in vivid memory. This is said to be because the event is so traumatic on the memory it imprints on you, or your soul per se, and no matter how old you get when discussed your mind immediately takes you back to that day. This is my recall of the events of September 11, 2001. The most significant thing I remember about the day is how clear blue the sky was. It’s a minor memory in comparison to what would become the events of that day, even still if you ask most people who lived through it, they will tell you the same thing. It is as if the sky was showing the calm before the storm and forecasting an impending doom that would eviscerate the spirit of a nation, but also help it unite in its grief to overcome the evil that fell upon America on that fateful day.

The September 11 attacks, most commonly referred to as 9/11, were a coordinated Islamist suicide terrorist attack carried out by al-Qaeda at the direction of Osama Bin Laden against the United States in 2001. On that morning in September, 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners scheduled to travel from the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions of the East Coast to California. The hijackers crashed the first two planes into the World Trade Center in New York City, two of the world’s five tallest buildings at the time, and aimed the next two flights toward targets in or near Washington, D.C., in an attack on the nation’s capital. The third team succeeded in striking the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense in Arlington County, Virginia, while the fourth plane went down in rural Pennsylvania during a passenger revolt. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and instigated the multi-decade global war on terror.

The first impact was that of American Airlines Flight 11, which ringleader Mohamed Atta flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan at 8:46 a.m. Sixteen minutes later, at 9:03, the World Trade Center’s South Tower was hit by United Airlines Flight 175. Both 110-story skyscrapers collapsed within an hour and forty-one minutes, bringing about the destruction of the remaining five structures in the WTC complex and damaging or destroying nearby buildings. A third flight, American Airlines Flight 77, crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m., causing a partial collapse. The fourth and final flight, United Airlines Flight 93, flew in the direction of the capital. Alerted to the previous attacks, the passengers fought for control, forcing the hijackers to nosedive the plane into a Stonycreek Township field, near Indian Lake and Shanksville, at 10:03 a.m. Investigators determined that Flight 93’s target was either the United States Capitol or the White House.

That evening, President George W. Bush was informed by the Central Intelligence Agency that its Counterterrorism Center had identified the attacks as having been the work of al-Qaeda under Osama bin Laden‘s leadership. The United States formally responded by launching the war on terror and invading Afghanistan to depose the Taliban, which rejected the conditions of U.S. terms to expel al-Qaeda from Afghanistan and extradite its leaders. The U.S.’s invocation of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty—its only usage to date—called upon allies to fight al-Qaeda. As U.S. and NATO invasion forces swept through Afghanistan, bin Laden eluded them by disappearing into the White Mountains. He denied any involvement until 2004, when excerpts of a taped statement in which he accepted responsibility for the attacks were released. Al-Qaeda‘s cited motivations included U.S. support of Israel, the presence of U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia, and sanctions against Iraq. The nearly decade-long manhunt for bin Laden concluded on May 2, 2011, when he was killed during a U.S. military raid after being tracked down to his compound inAbbottabad, Pakistan. The war in Afghanistan continued for another eight years until the agreement was made in February 2020 for American and NATO troops to withdraw from the country, and the last members of the U.S. armed forces left the region on August 30, 2021, resulting in the return to power of the Taliban.

Excluding the hijackers, the attacks killed 2,977 people, injured thousands more and gave rise to substantial long-term health consequences while also causing at least $10 billion in infrastructure and property damage. It remains the deadliest terrorist attack in human history as well as the deadliest incident for firefighters and law enforcement personnel in US history, killing 343 and 72 members, respectively. The loss of life stemming from the impact of Flight 11 secured its place as the most lethal plane crash in aviation history followed by the death toll incurred by Flight 175. The destruction of the World Trade Center and its environs seriously harmed the U.S. economy and induced global market shocks. Many other countries strengthened anti-terrorism legislation and expanded their powers of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Cleanup of the World Trade Center site (colloquially “Ground Zero”) took eight months and was completed in May 2002, while the Pentagon was repaired within a year. After delays in the design of a replacement complex, construction of the One World Trade Center began in November 2006; it opened in November 2014. Memorials to the attacks include the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City, The Pentagon Memorial in Arlington County, Virginia, and the Flight 93 National Memorial at the Pennsylvania crash site.

World Trade Center, the 2006 film directed by Oliver Stone and written by Andrea Berloff dramatizes the disaster of that day, in particular, it looks at the lives of the Port Authority Police who responded to the attacks. It specifically looks at Sergeant John McLoughlin and Officer Will Jimeno, who were trapped in the rubble of the collapse of the World Trade Centers after the planes hit the towers, and were two of twenty people found alive at Ground Zero, and they were number eighteen and nineteen, respectively. The film stars an ensemble cast that features Nicolas Cage, Michael Peña, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Maria Bello, Stephen Dorff, Jay Hernandez, Michael Shannon, and Jon Bernthal. The film was released in the United States by Paramount Pictures on August 9, 2006. It was met with generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $163 million worldwide.

World Trade Center is available now for rent on all streaming platforms…