Twenty-four years ago, terrorists used commercial planes to attack the United States. After hijacking four planes, they flew two into the World Trade Center in New York City and one into the Pentagon in Washington, DC. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania. A total of 2,977 people were killed.
As time passes, the memory of 9/11 evolves. Many people today are too young to remember the day itself. Others were children at the time, and their memories differ from those of their parents.
This is because the younger generation, born in the 1990s or after 9/11, remembers the event through the lens of its consequences. The Global War on Terror stretched out from 9/11, continuing for roughly 20 years. That war reshaped the Middle East and the world we live in.
The reaction to the war in Iraq led the Obama administration to recalibrate America’s role in the region. The Trump administration, in turn, was partly a reaction to that recalibration. We are all, in a sense, children of 9/11, but our understanding of that day depends on whether we feel we have lived primarily in its shadow or experienced it as a wave that swept over us.
I was part of the generation that was already an adult on 9/11. I was studying in Arizona at the time. For us, the attack on the United States was a shock, in part because it came after a decade in which the US appeared to be the world’s sole superpower.
The 'new world order'
George H.W. Bush had promised a “new world order” during the war against Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. The argument was that Saddam had broken international law by invading a sovereign country. The US intervened with its powerful modern military machine to eject Saddam, forming a coalition that even included Russia after the Soviet Union’s collapse.
The “new world order” saw the American military machine, which had inherited the strength of the Cold War, unleashed across the globe. The US invaded Panama and Haiti and sent troops to Somalia and the Balkans. There seemed to be nowhere Americans would not go. The Revolution in Military Affairs introduced new technology, allowing Americans to watch cruise missiles and smart bombs strike targets in Iraq from their living rooms.
Saddam Hussein commanded one of the most powerful militaries in the Middle East, with hundreds of thousands of men, elite Republican Guard units, poison gas stockpiles, a nuclear weapons program, French-made air defenses, Russian MiGs, and even a plan to build a “supergun” with help from a French artillery expert.
When the US sent troops to Saudi Arabia in 1991, many feared a major battle. Saddam predicted the “mother of all battles.” Body bags were prepared. Gas masks were issued. Some warned of “another Vietnam.” But, as the character Walter Sobchak notes in The Big Lebowski, fighting in the desert is not like fighting in the jungle. The US and its coalition partners, particularly the British, quickly pushed aside Saddam’s forces and liberated Kuwait. Colin Powell articulated the “Powell Doctrine,” promising that the US would only wage wars where goals were clear and achievable - no more Vietnams.
After the Gulf War, the Bush administration fell from power due to domestic politics, and a younger leader, Bill Clinton, entered the White House. Clinton promised a moral US foreign policy, focused on humanitarian intervention, globalism, and liberalism.
At home, however, there were darker moments. American police and militarized federal agents laid siege to the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. The assault killed dozens. Two years later, in revenge, an American terrorist bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.
The 1990s were marked by this tension between domestic strife and foreign involvement in conflicts. An arrogance grew around the US role in the world. When terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in 1993, the attack was largely dismissed. When they struck US embassies in Africa, the victims were mostly local. When they attacked the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, little changed.
The Clinton administration lobbed a few bombs at Sudan and Afghanistan, but most Americans did not see the point. Osama bin Laden, a shadowy Saudi figure, was plotting a war, but the US believed it could be handled by police and the FBI. Even when a Predator drone was deployed to find Bin Laden in Afghanistan, it was not armed.
On September 9, 2001, al-Qaeda operatives assassinated Afghan rebel leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. If anyone had been paying attention, they might have seen it as a warning. Two days later, the hijackers boarded their flights and began their killing spree.
“In the hours and days that followed the attacks, we witnessed the very best of humanity. First responders ran toward danger to save others. Strangers helped one another down stairwells and across bridges,” Craig Ferguson, public affairs officer at the US Embassy in Antananarivo, Madagascar, said on September 11, 2025, in memory of that day.
“People across the country came together - not as individuals divided by background, politics, or geography - but as Americans united in grief, compassion, and resolve. Today, as we stand here by our flag, we remember the lives lost, the families forever changed, and the courage shown by so many.”
Today we look back in memory, but for many of us, the memories are of what came after. The US invaded Afghanistan and stayed for twenty years. By the end, an American born on 9/11 could have been serving in that war.
The Biden administration’s withdrawal from Kabul was reminiscent of the withdrawal from South Vietnam - chaotic and humiliating. The Taliban, hosted for years by US ally Qatar, quickly retook Afghanistan. The US-backed government collapsed overnight. Billions of dollars and two decades of work evaporated.
Questions remain: Where did all the money go? What was the point of all the death and sacrifice? Why was a US ally hosting the Taliban, who were fighting the US? And why was Bin Laden found hiding in Pakistan, a US partner, in 2011, living next to Pakistan’s version of West Point?
The US invasion of Iraq brought similar questions. Iraq soon became an Iranian sphere of influence, with militias targeting American forces. By June 2014, two Iraqi divisions collapsed in Mosul as ISIS advanced, and the entire Iraqi army disintegrated. American-trained units disappeared, leaving thousands of US-made vehicles for ISIS - just as the Taliban would do in 2021.
In the end, ISIS was defeated by a US-led coalition, but the cost was high. The Middle East now balances ties with Washington by also courting China, Russia, and other powers. Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel was, in part, predicated on its belief that the US-led world order was collapsing. It killed more than 1,000 people, including Americans, and assumed Washington would not respond forcefully.
Indeed, little was done by the Biden administration to secure the release of Americans held in Gaza. It took until January 2025 for the Trump administration to declare that enough was enough.
Even now, the Gaza war continues. The shadow of 9/11 still looms, and there is still no clarity about what comes next.