NEW YORK (AP) – Twenty years ago, 9/11 appeared as a date. At midnight, it was 9/11, the startling start of a new era of terror, war, politics, patriotism and tragedy.
The United States marks the anniversary of the milestone on Saturday under the beating of a pandemic and in the shadow of a frantic withdrawal from Afghanistan, which fell to the same militant rulers who sheltered the plots of the 2001 attacks. .
“It’s difficult because you had the hope that this would be a different time and a different world. But sometimes history starts to repeat itself and not in the best way, ”said Thea Trinidad, who lost her father in the attacks and has signed up to read the names of the victims at the ceremony from scratch to New York.
President Joe Biden is scheduled to travel to the three attack sites: World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and a camp near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
In a video posted Friday night, he lamented the ongoing 9/11 losses.
“Children have grown up without parents and parents have suffered without children,” said Biden, a childhood friend of the father of a Sept. 11 victim, Davis Grier Sezna Jr.
But the president also highlighted what he called the “central lesson” of 9/11: “that at our most vulnerable point … unity is our greatest strength.”
Former President George W. Bush, the nation’s leader on Sept. 11, must be presented at the Pennsylvania Memorial and his successor, Barack Obama, at zero. The only other U.S. president after 9/11, Donald Trump, plans to be in New York, in addition to commenting on a boxing match in the afternoon in Florida.
Other sightings, from the laying of wreaths in Portland, Maine, to a parade of firefighters in Guam, are planned for an entire country that is now full of plaques, statues and gardens commemorating 9/11. .
Using hijacked planes as missiles, the assailants caused the deadliest terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, causing nearly 3,000 lives, knocking down the twin towers and ushering in an era of fear.
Security was redefined, with changes to airport checkpoints, police practices and government oversight powers. In the years that followed, virtually any major explosion, shock, or act of violence seemed to raise a serious question: “Is it terrorism?” Some violence and ideological plots ensued, though federal and public officials lately they have become increasingly concerned about threats from national extremists after years of concentrating on international terrorist groups in the wake of 9/11.
New York faced the first questions about whether he could recover from the blow at his financial center and restore a sense of security among the crowds and skyscrapers. New Yorkers eventually rebuilt a more populous and prosperous city, but they had to count with the tactics of a post-11/11 police department and a larger gap between those who have and those who don’t.
A “war on terror” sparked invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, where the longest war in the United States ended last month with a massive airstrike precipitated and punctuated by a suicide bombing. which killed 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members and was attributed to a branch of the Islamic State extremist group. Now the United States is worried that al-Qaeda, the terrorist network behind 9/11, can regroup in Afghanistan.
Two decades after he helped pick and treat fellow wounded at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, retired Army Colonel Malcolm Bruce Westcott is saddened and frustrated by the continuing threat of terrorism.
“I always felt that my generation, my military cohort, would take care of it; we wouldn’t pass it on to anyone else,” said Westcott of Greensboro, Georgia. “And we transmitted it.”
For Angelique Tung, who was in the mall for a business meeting on Sept. 11 and escaped down 77 flights of stairs, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan provoked empathy for the troops serving there. Some now wonder if his efforts and sacrifices made a difference, which makes Tung think of a question that has been asked since he survived 9/11.
“I hope that after 20 years, other people will ask this question: what can you get out of it?” said Tung, of Wellesley, Massachusetts.
September 11 drove a wave of shared mourning and common purpose, but it soon gave way.
American Muslims held out suspicion, vigilance and hate crimes. The search to understand the catastrophic toll of terrorist attacks brought about changes in building design and emergency communications, but it also spurred conspiracy theories that sowed a culture of skepticism.. Schisms and resentments grew over immigration, the balance between tolerance and vigilance, the meaning of patriotism, the proper way to honor the dead, and the scope of a promise to “never forget.”
Trinity was ten years old when he overheard his father, Michael, saying goodbye to his mother over the phone from the burning mall. He remembers the pain, but also the fellowship of the following days, when all of New York “felt like a family.”
“Now, when I feel like the world is so divided, I just wish we could go back to it,” said Trinidad, of Orlando, Florida. “I think it would have been such a different world if we could have stayed in that feeling.”