9/11/2001

The deadliest terrorist attack on the world’s foremost superpower got underway at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, according to “The 9/11 Commission Report” by The National Commission on the Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The countdown started when two followers of Osama Bin Laden — a Saudi Arabian millionaire and religious zealot who founded the extremist Islamic organization al-Qaeda — boarded a flight from Portland, Maine to Boston.

Upon arrival at Logan International Airport, they and three other members of al-Qaeda boarded the 7:45 a.m. American Airlines Flight 11 bound for Los Angeles. At the same airport, five other al-Qaeda terrorists checked in for the 8 a.m. United Airlines Flight 175, also bound for Los Angeles.

In the meantime, another five al-Qaeda conspirators were waiting at the Dulles Airport outside Washington, D.C. to board a third plane bound for Los Angeles, the 7:15 a.m. American Airlines Flight 77. And shortly after 8 a.m., four more members of al-Qaeda’s crusade against Western “infidels” departed for San Francisco — in their case, aboard United Airlines Flight 93 flying from the Newark airport in New Jersey.

So, on that early morning, there were 19 suicidal terrorists in the air. They were ready to destroy some of America’s most critical targets by crashing four airliners carrying nearly 300 passengers and crews, loaded in total with 11,400 gallons of highly flammable jet fuel.

The long-planned, almost flawlessly executed mayhem started at 8:14 a.m. when the hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11 used knives and box cutters to subdue the flight attendants, kill the captain and co-pilot, and have one of the assailants take over the controls of the plane.

All of the al-Qaeda hijackers followed the same plan. The terrorists used mace and pepper spray to force the first-class passengers to move to the rear of the plane. With the exception of United Airlines Flight 93, they apparently managed to keep control of all the passengers by slashing and beating some of them while telling others that there was “a bomb” aboard the plane, but that they wouldn’t be harmed if they remained seated.

Three of the Los Angeles-bound planes under the direction of the half-trained hijackers abruptly changed their course toward New York City and Washington, D.C., and with the throttles advanced to the maximum power, they struck their targets. At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 rammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Minutes later, at 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower. Shortly after, at 9:37 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 dove into the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, some of the 33 passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 received alarming phone calls from friends and relatives about the carnage in the skies. They chose to fight when their plane was hijacked 35,000 feet above eastern Ohio. At 9:57 a.m., they stormed the cockpit and the pilot plunged the plane into the ground. They crashed outside Shanksville, a small community in Pennsylvania. Thus, the passengers of Flight 93 stopped the plane from reaching the terrorists’ intended target — likely the White House or Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

The carnage wrought by the 19 suicidal conspirators set a new record for terrorism. In less than two hours, a total of 2,977 people lost their lives. The vast majority who died were civilian office workers, but the toll also included 383 enormously brave first responders who rushed into the burning Twin Towers to rescue the victims. The fires fed by the jet fuel were so fierce, they melted even metal.

America’s Response to the Attacks

The human and economic costs of the attacks were horrendous. As of August 2016, six out of every 10 dead bodies in the Twin Towers had not been identified. They were either completely burned or so disfigured that their names could not be established with certainty.

Thousands of other New Yorkers, and the victims of the attack on the Pentagon, still suffer from their injuries. The damage to buildings ran into billions of dollars. Fifteen years after 9/11, the construction of three new World Trade Towers was still far from finished.

And throughout the shocked Western world, governments took unprecedented measures to prevent more terrorist atrocities.

Air travel across the United States and Canada was almost completely suspended for three days; from coast to coast, communities, sports clubs, and other organizations canceled or postponed events that could attract large crowds and offer targets for terrorists. Similar precautions were taken by some European countries. In the United Kingdom, for instance, civilian aircraft were forbidden from flying over London for several days after the attack.

The U.S. government was reorganized and put on an emergency footing. Congress created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and tasked it with a huge mission: preventing terrorism disasters and managing border security, immigration, customs, and cybersecurity.

Within 10 years, DHS became the government’s third largest component, with 240,000 employees and a budget of $98.8 billion. Judging by the number of attempted or completed terrorist incidents in Europe, Americans became safer than many of their European counterparts as a result of these investments.

The attacks launched America’s “War on Terror,” declared by President George W. Bush the day after 9/11 as he stood atop the smoldering ruins of the Twin Towers. The brunt of this War on Terror was carried out by special U.S. military units and the CIA. While there were some initial setbacks, these groups eventually found success tracking down and eliminating the planners of the attacks, along with other rising terrorists.

For the CIA, Afghanistan was a familiar part of the Middle East. During the 1980s, when the country was at war against an occupation by the Soviet Red Army, CIA helped fund the native “mujahedeen” through the Pakistan intelligence services and a program known as Operation Cyclone. It was a successful operation — the Red Army was forced to leave Afghanistan in 1989 — but some critics charged that the CIA-supplied weapons also fell into the hands of al-Qaeda and thereby aided the terrorists.

The allegations were vehemently disputed by American officials and reporters who had covered the war, and were forgotten two decades later when special CIA and U.S. military units returned to Afghanistan to try to capture bin Ladin. After some initial setbacks — including his escape from Afghanistan — the hunt on al-Qaeda was joined by other Western nations who helped in tracking down and eliminating most of the planners of the 9/11 attacks, as well as many other terrorists.

The crowning triumph of these operations was a May 2011 helicopter-launched raid on Bin Laden’s secret hideout in Abbottabad, a town near the capital of Pakistan and close to a major training base of the Pakistani army. The mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks was killed by an elite unit of U.S. Navy SEALs.

But in the way of all wars, the fight against terrorism spawned unintended consequences. For one thing, al-Qaeda and other extremist Islamist groups proved to have deep roots. Crushed in their original haunts in the Middle East and unable to repeat their attacks on the U.S., many terrorists moved their operations to Western Europe, where they attacked British, French, German, and Spanish civilians.

The U.S. crusade on terror also led to large-scale invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. wars in these two countries severely destabilized a region that has not known stability since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.

The resulting upheavals of the past decade inflamed divisions among ethnic and religious groups in Iraq, led to bloody civil war in Syria, and unleashed a dramatic emergence of the anti-Western group called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The civil war in Syria and carnage in ISIL-controlled territories of Iraq and Syria resulted in a massive flight of Muslim refugees to Europe.

Aside from creating the DHS, Congress passed only one other major anti-terrorism law. The USA Patriot Act of 2001 was a far-reaching act with what many saw as a justifiable purpose: to enable the nation’s protectors to trace patterns of behavior that could help identify potential enemies within the country and predict terrorist activities.

As a result, America’s security agencies gained the ability to collect and process massive amounts of information about every individual in the United States.

But when leaked documents revealed the full extent of security agencies collecting massive amounts of private information from citizens, outrage forced Congress to act. When the Patriot Act expired in 2015, the new USA Freedom Act placed restrictions on agencies’ access to private information and erected barriers protecting citizens’ privacy. It still allowed surveillance but within limits.

In the wake of the attacks, one thing that exemplified the best qualities of America was a call from many Americans for religious tolerance in the face of rising prejudice and Islamophobia. One week after 9/11, President Bush called on the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., and assured the gathering that the United States knows the difference between terrorists and good citizens.

“America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens,” he said, “and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. [They] are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads. And they need to be treated with respect. In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect.”

The feeling is still seen today. As the sister of one of the victims of 9/11 attack wrote in The Washington Post,  a “murderous act does not justify discrimination against people based on race, religion or nationality. It does not justify banning refugees and immigrants. These cruel actions may not be done in my name, or in the name of my dead brother.”