9/11: A Generation Later

On the morning of 9/11, we were having breakfast at our favorite Midtown spot before walking to our lawyers to watch the capital from the investors in the Sun begin to flow into the newspaper’s account. As we stepped outside, our phone rang. A colleague was calling to caution us that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. We raced back inside to hear a lady in a phone booth call out that a second plane had hit. “It’s terrorism,” she screamed. So, for us, began one of the indelible chapters in the city’s history. In the face of an immense tragedy, New Yorkers came together and rebuilt their city. And did so in recognition that despite racial and religious tension, despite vast differences in wealth and circumstances, the spirit and character of New York proved bigger than its problems. A city felt uniformly humbled by and grateful for its firemen, police officers, and first responders.This spirit of unity was, to a degree, echoed on a national scale in the aftermath of 9/11. Days after the attacks, President George W. Bush addressed Congress, hailing “the endurance of rescuers, working past exhaustion,” along with “the unfurling of flags, the lighting of candles, the giving of blood, the saying of prayers — in English, Hebrew, and Arabic.” He touted “the decency of a loving and giving people who have made the grief of strangers their own.”Mr. Bush’s own approval rating soared to 86 percent. The resurgence of national pride at the time flummoxed some on the left. The Times’s Blaine Harden seemed to marvel at the change among Americans who “had never found a compelling reason to take a stiff drink of patriotism.” After 9/11, he wrote, love of country had “inspired a deeply felt and classless sense of community.” Yet acrimony did not prove permanently banished. On September 11, 2006, these columns chronicled the mood at New York and in the nation more broadly, noting the “inspiring and somber scene” when Mr. Bush, joined by other officials, had laid a wreath at Ground Zero. A single Marine honor guard was, we reckoned, a “reminder that the country is in a war being fought thousands of miles away at Iraq, Afghanistan, and secret locations by Marines and GIs in dirtier uniforms.” The attack on 9/11, we reckoned, was best seen as “a new phase” in a long-running conflict against terrorists who target Americans both in and out of uniform. The terrorists, we said, had struck “buildings that held thousands of civilians who weren’t wearing any uniforms at all other than the ones of office workers or restaurant waiters or bond traders.” The Twin Towers collapsed, we lamented, “on those wearing the uniforms of police officers and firefighters.”A quarter-century after the attacks, the lack of accountability for many of the perpetrators is a long-running frustration. The accused ringleader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has so far eluded justice. This is in part because of a Supreme Court ruling that grants civilian due process to enemy combatants. Efforts by 9/11 families to secure billions of dollars owed to them by the Taliban pend, too, in court. It’s a reminder of the illogic of using civilian law in a war. More broadly, too, in the past 25 years America’s fight against terror has yet to be won, even as some gains have been achieved. If President Biden’s surrender in 2021 to the Taliban of Afghanistan was a setback, though, President Trump’s campaign against Iran, if carried to victory, could in this broader war help set America on the path to an enduring peace that would be a tribute to the memory of those slain 25 years ago today.

9/11: A Generation Later

9/11: A Generation Later

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