On the morning of September 11th, I was having breakfast listening to the news on the radio. Suddenly, there was a report of a small plane crashing into the World Trade Center. I immediately turned on the television and saw the second plane hit the second tower. I was the Executive Producer of the 11 o’clock news in Philadelphia at the time and I normally left for work in the early afternoon. My phone rang and the News Director said, “Do you see what’s happening?” I said, “I’m on my way.” We had never seen anything like this before in our country. This happened in other places, not here. This was an attack in the middle of our biggest, most important city aimed at our most iconic buildings on a bright sunny morning. It just got worse when we heard another plane hit the Pentagon and yet another plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania when passengers fought back against the terrorists. Nearly three thousand were killed including 343 firefighters and 71 police officers.
The long shadow of this day still hangs over the country as we remember and pay tribute to the victims and their families on this twenty-fifth anniversary of the attacks. It changed our view of own vulnerability and the way we viewed ourselves, our neighbors and the rest of the world. We immediately came together as a nation to fight back. There was support for President George Bush’s call for a global war on terrorism. In his address to Congress on September 20, 2001 he said, “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, and stopped and defeated.” Americans gave Bush overwhelming support for the invasion of Afghanistan to find those responsible.
The Department of Homeland Security was created along with the TSA. Getting on an airplane would never be the same. There was increased security around our daily lives. Twenty-five years later there are surveillance cameras everywhere. Congress passed the Patriot Act which expanded the federal government’s ability to conduct domestic surveillance. It allowed the federal government to wiretap phone calls. It allowed the FBI to demand records from banks, phone companies and internet providers without a judge’s approval. There were increased attacks and discrimination against Muslims that still happens today. There are many more mass shootings today with the proliferation of guns.
The war on terror cost us thousands of lives in endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where we gave up and came home defeated. Those wars had great impact on the country. We are now at each other’s throats and more divided on the type of country we want to be since the Civil War. I believe the roundup of illegal immigrants and mass deportations and the terror caused by ICE agents in American cities is a long term effect of how the country has changed. We now view our country and the world around us as dangerous. No place is safe. People are killed in schools, at parades, movie theaters, picnics, and concerts.
When I see the video of the burning towers all these years later, I still feel rage and sadness, but also a sense of determination. I remember that inspiring night when George Bush threw out the first pitch of game three of the World Series at Yankee Stadium and thousands cheered as one. We need to get back to that united feeling as yet another anniversary is upon us.
It’s time again that we respectfully honor those who died and their families to show we will never forget them. We should also remember the four-hundred thousand first responders, rescue workers and cleaning crews who were exposed to toxins during the initial nine month cleanup of Ground Zero. More than two-thousand of them have died from different cancers because of that exposure.
9/11 changed everything about our country and us. We should take the occasion of this sad anniversary to look at ourselves and decide it’s time to stop the screaming and fighting and finally come together. We still have to recover from that terrible morning twenty-five years ago.
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