How One Day Changed America

The terror attacks of 9/11 briefly united a shattered America. But 25 years on their legacy remains in the wars, political divisions and geopolitical shifts that followed. After 25 years, the legacy of the September 11 terror attacks continues to shape America's politics and its place in the world.

A quarter-century on, what lingers in the mind from that world-upending day? September 11, 2001. Or 9/11, as it quickly came to be labelled, a term previously known as the primary emergency number in North America but now forever associated with an Islamist terrorist attack that killed 2,977 people from more than 100 countries, not including the 19 hijackers. Perhaps, initially, it was sheer confusion, as news channels interrupted regular programming to switch to images from Lower Manhattan.

The North Tower of the World Trade Center was aflame. A billowing plume of charcoal grey smoke darkened what had been on that autumn morning almost cloudless blue skies. Maybe it was the shock of seeing the second plane spearing into the South Tower, when it instantly became clear that terrorism, not pilot or mechanical error, was to blame.

Some will recall President George W Bush reading a book, The Pet Goat, to a group of schoolchildren in Sarasota, Florida, and the sight of his ashen-faced White House Chief of Staff, Andrew Card, whispering in his ear. "A second plane hit the second tower, said Card. "America is under attack.

Not just America, but our world had changed with manic suddenness. The first plane hit the north face of the North Tower at 8:46am. The second plane crashed into the south face of the South Tower at 9:03am.

Little more than 30 minutes later at 9:37am Washington DC was also under assault. American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon, like New York's Twin Towers, a symbol of US hegemony. Shortly after 10am, a plane crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93, we found out later, had fought back against the al-Qaeda terrorists who had hijacked the plane with the intention of flying it into a government building in Washington DC, probably the United States Capitol building or the White House. All these years on, it is traumatising to recall the towers collapsing in on themselves, those sturdy, seemingly indomitable skyscrapers disintegrating into columns of plunging ash. By 10:30am, the World Trade Center had ceased to exist.

So, too, the complacency of the post-Cold War world when America seemed so unassailable. From a day of such momentous history, it is the smaller, personal details that evoke powerful memories. The recordings of workers trapped inside the burning towers telephoning loved ones, knowing they were uttering final farewells.

The snapshots of people trapped on the upper floors of the Twin Towers, leaping through shattered windows to certain death. The "Missing" posters affixed to lampposts across Manhattan, a story behind each face. Coming at the dawning of a new millennium, September 11 was the first major global event of the globalised age.

Coming in the early years of our new online world, where the information flow was instantaneous, 9/11 became more of a shared, intimate and immediate experience. How did it change America and the watching world? What is its meaning in September 2026?

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks the United States of America was genuinely united. A nation already showing signs of its present-day polarity demonstrated shoulder-to-shoulder solidarity. Only the previous year, a disputed presidential election ultimately decided by a Supreme Court voting along ideological lines, had shown America to be a 50/50 nation.

After the US television networks decided in 2000 to adopt the same colour scheme for their election night graphics, it became more common to split the country into Republican red and Democratic blue. In the hours, days and weeks after 9/11, though, Americans came together at vigils, in long queues that formed outside blood donation centres and in singing of the national anthem ahead of baseball and gridiron matches. That evening, about 150 Republican and Democrat lawmakers gathered on the East Steps of the US Capitol building, where they broke spontaneously into a rendition of "God Bless America".

A few weeks later, a poll conducted in early October indicated 79 per cent of Americans had displayed the Stars and Stripes, a burst of red, white and blue patriotism. Journalists from many of the US networks affixed flag pins to their lapels. As young Washington time of the 9/11 attacks, I saw all of this with my own eyes. Since the end of the Cold War, America had lacked a common enemy.