America After 9/11: the War on Terror and the 21st Century

The morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001 began as a clear, cloudless late-summer day across the northeastern United States. At 7:59 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 departed Boston's Logan International Airport bound for Los Angeles with 92 people aboard, including five hijackers. United Airlines Flight 175, also heading from Boston to Los Angeles, took off at 8:14 a.m. with 65 people aboard, including five hijackers. At 8:20 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 departed Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C., bound for Los Angeles with 64 people, including five hijackers. The final aircraft, United Airlines Flight 93, took off from Newark, New Jersey at 8:42 a.m. bound for San Francisco with 44 people, including four hijackers. Within two hours, all four planes would be used as weapons in the deadliest terrorist attack in world history.

At 8:46 a.m., American Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan between the 93rd and 99th floors. Most Americans who would eventually see the footage first watched the burning tower in confusion, uncertain whether a terrible accident had occurred. That confusion was eliminated at 9:03 a.m. when United Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower between the 77th and 85th floors. It was now clear to everyone watching — including millions glued to their television screens — that the United States was under attack. At 9:37 a.m., American Flight 77 slammed into the western face of the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, the headquarters of the United States military, killing all 64 aboard and 125 people in the building. At 9:59 a.m., the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed, and at 10:28 a.m. the North Tower followed, sending towering clouds of smoke, ash, and debris through the streets of lower Manhattan. At 10:03 a.m., United Flight 93 crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers — having learned by phone of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — overpowered the hijackers in an attempt to retake the aircraft. Investigators later determined that the hijackers' likely target was either the United States Capitol or the White House.

The final death toll reached 2,977 victims, not counting the 19 hijackers. Among the dead were 2,606 people at the World Trade Center site, including 343 firefighters and 71 law enforcement officers who had rushed into the buildings to assist evacuees. At the Pentagon, 184 people perished. The attacks left an indelible wound on the American psyche, producing a grief that was simultaneously personal and national. Thousands of families lost fathers, mothers, children, siblings, and friends. The attack was witnessed in real time on television by tens of millions of Americans, creating a shared traumatic experience unlike anything in the nation's history, comparable in some respects to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 but vastly larger in scale.

President George W. Bush was reading to elementary school students in Sarasota, Florida, when his chief of staff, Andrew Card, whispered in his ear that a second plane had struck the World Trade Center. Bush's immediate response — he continued listening to the children read for several minutes before departing — became a subject of later controversy, but his subsequent leadership in the days following the attacks was widely praised. In a televised address to the nation on the evening of September 11, Bush declared that the United States would "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them." On September 14, Bush visited the ruins of the World Trade Center with a bullhorn, telling rescue workers who shouted that they could hear him, "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." His approval rating soared to 90 percent in the days following the attacks, representing the highest job approval ever recorded for a sitting president.

The attacks also had profound logistical and economic consequences that extended far beyond the immediate loss of life. Lower Manhattan, the heart of global finance, was shut down for days; the New York Stock Exchange did not reopen until September 17, 2001, and experienced its worst week of losses since the Great Depression upon reopening. The airline industry, already struggling before 9/11, was devastated by the attacks and the subsequent drop in passenger demand; Congress quickly passed a $15 billion airline bailout. The economic disruption, combined with a recession already underway before the attacks, contributed to a period of weak growth in the months that followed. Tourism to New York and Washington, D.C., dropped sharply. Insurance companies paid out billions in claims related to the attacks. And the overall sense of vulnerability — the recognition that no corner of the American homeland was truly safe from attack — had incalculable effects on consumer confidence and economic behavior.

The investigation that followed the attacks culminated in the work of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, commonly known as the 9/11 Commission, established by Congress and the President in November 2002 under the chairmanship of former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean and former Congressman Lee Hamilton. The Commission's final report, released in July 2004 and based on extensive interviews with government officials, intelligence analysts, law enforcement officers, survivors, and families of victims, provided the most comprehensive public account of the attacks and the failures that allowed them to succeed. The Commission documented a series of missed opportunities: FBI field agents in Phoenix and Minneapolis who had raised concerns about Middle Eastern men taking flight training and were not heeded; an intelligence warning in August 2001 that al-Qaeda intended to strike inside the United States; failures of communication and coordination between the CIA and FBI. The Commission recommended sweeping reforms, many of which were enacted in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of December 2004, which created the position of Director of National Intelligence to coordinate the activities of the sprawling American intelligence community.

The immediate national response to the attacks was marked by an outpouring of solidarity, patriotism, and mutual support that temporarily dissolved the partisan divisions that had characterized the bitterly contested 2000 presidential election. Congress passed a resolution authorizing the use of military force against those responsible for the attacks by a vote of 98-0 in the Senate and 420-1 in the House of Representatives. Americans lined up to donate blood. Flags flew from buildings and vehicles across the country. Vigils were held in towns and cities from coast to coast. Allied nations expressed profound sympathy; NATO invoked its collective defense clause for the first time in its history, declaring that the attacks on the United States constituted an attack on all member nations. The French newspaper Le Monde declared, "Nous sommes tous Americains" — "We are all Americans." The sense of national and international solidarity was palpable, though it would prove tragically short-lived.