[ad_1]
NEW YORK (AP) – Twenty years ago, September 11 was just a date. At midnight it was September 11, the astonishing start of a new era of terror, war, politics, patriotism and tragedy.
The United States marks the milestone anniversary on Saturday under the veil of a pandemic and in the shadow of a frenzied withdrawal from Afghanistan, which has fallen into the hands of the same militant leaders who gave refuge to the plotters of the 2001 attacks.
“It’s difficult because you were hoping it would be just another time and another world. But sometimes history starts to repeat itself and not in the best possible way, ”said Thea Trinidad, who lost her father in the attacks and signed up to read the names of the victims at the ceremony at Ground Zero. At New York.
President Joe Biden expected to visit all three attack sites: New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
In a video posted Friday night, he mourned the ongoing losses of September 11.
“Children grew up without parents and parents suffered without children,” said Biden, a childhood friend of the father of a 9/11 victim, Davis Grier Sezna Jr.
But the president also highlighted what he called the “central lesson” of September 11: “that among our most vulnerable (…) unity is our greatest strength”.
Former President George W. Bush, leader of the country on September 11, is expected at the Pennsylvania Memorial and his successor, Barack Obama, at Ground Zero. Only other post-9/11 U.S. president Donald Trump plans to be in New York, in addition to commenting on boxing match in Florida at night.
More celebrations – from a wreath laying in Portland, Maine, to a firefighter parade in Guam – are planned in a country now filled with 9/11 memorial plaques, statues and gardens.
Using hijacked planes as missiles, the attackers inflicted the deadliest terrorist attacks on American soil, claiming nearly 3,000 lives, toppling the Twin Towers and ushering in an era of fear.
Security has been redefined, with changes to airport checkpoints, policing practices and government oversight powers. In the years that followed, virtually every major explosion, accident or act of violence seemed to raise a crucial question: “Is this terrorism?” Ideological violence and conspiracies followed, although federal officials and the public have recently become increasingly concerned about threats from domestic extremists after years of focusing on international terrorist groups in the aftermath of September 11.
New York was confronted early on with the question of whether it could one day recover from the blow to its financial hub and restore a sense of security among crowds and skyscrapers. New Yorkers finally rebuilt a more populous and prosperous city but had to rely with the tactics of a post 9/11 police force and a growing gap between the haves and have-nots.
A “war on terror” led to invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, where America’s longest war ended last month with a massive and rushed airlift punctuated by a bombing -suicide. which killed 169 Afghans and 13 American servicemen and was attributed to a branch of the extremist group Islamic State. The United States is now affected that al-Qaida, the terrorist network behind September 11, could regroup in Afghanistan.
Two decades after helping sort and treat injured colleagues at the Pentagon on September 11, retired Army Col. Malcolm Bruce Westcott is saddened and frustrated by the continuing threat of terrorism.
“I always thought my generation, my military cohort, would take care of it – we wouldn’t pass it on to anyone else,” said Westcott, of Greensboro, Ga. “And we passed it on.”
For Angelique Tung, who was at the mall for a business meeting on September 11 and escaped up 77 flights of stairs, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan sparked empathy for the troops who served there. Some are now wondering if their efforts and sacrifices made a difference, which makes Tung think of a question she’s asked since she survived 9/11.
“I hope that after 20 years, other people ask themselves this question: what good can it come? says Tung, of Wellesley, Massachusetts.
September 11 launched a wave of shared mourning and a common goal, but it quickly gave way.
Muslim Americans endured suspicion, surveillance and hate crimes. The quest to understand the catastrophic toll of terrorist attacks led to changes in building design and emergency communications, but it also spurred conspiracy theories that sowed a culture of skepticism.. Schisms and resentments have grown about immigration, the balance between tolerance and vigilance, the sense of patriotism, the right way to honor the dead and the scope of a promise to “never forget” .
Trinidad was 10 when she heard her father, Michael, say goodbye to her mother over the phone shopping center on fire. She remembers the pain but also the camaraderie of the days that followed, when all of New York “felt like it was family.”
“Now when I feel like the world is so divided, I just wish we could come back to it,” said Trinidad, of Orlando, Fla. “I feel like the world would have been so different if we could just have kept that feeling.”
[ad_2]
Source link