The 9/11 attacks of 2001 – in pictures
By Grant Colby · Reporting from Amarillo ·
Twenty-five years ago, the world shifted on its axis. We watched the North and South Towers fall, the Pentagon burn, and a field in Pennsylvania become a sanctuary of sacrifice.
Twenty-five years ago, the world shifted on its axis. We watched the North and South Towers fall, the Pentagon burn, and a field in Pennsylvania become a sanctuary of sacrifice. Nearly 3,000 people were murdered by al-Qaida in a coordinated strike that proved the American shoreline was no longer a moat.
As we mark this anniversary on September 11, 2026, the mood in downtown Manhattan—where President George W. Bush and Vice President JD Vance joined victims' families—is one of heavy reflection. SABC News captures the raw, intergenerational ache in the words of Caroline Ogonowski, whose father, Captain John Ogonowski, died on Flight 11. She spoke of a "new sadness," noting that her son will never know his grandfather. It is a heartbreaking reality. But as a man who flew C-130s and balanced books during the Carter malaise, I know that while grief is a private necessity, it is a public liability if it replaces a strategy of strength.
The Cost of a Broken Shield
The mechanism of September 11 was identical to the Attack on Pearl Harbor: a sudden, catastrophic external strike on domestic soil that shattered a national illusion of safety and forced a profound shift in identity. In 1941, we ended isolationism; in 2001, we ended the fantasy that we could ignore the breeding grounds of jihadism. Both events proved that peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of deterrence.
When the smoke cleared, we built a massive federal apparatus to ensure it never happened again. KATU reminds us of the birth of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Department of Homeland Security, and the USA Patriot Act. For a time, these were necessary shields. But over two decades, the shield became a shackle. I’ve seen how regulation compounds until it strangles the shop on Main Street; I see the same bloat in our security state. We traded efficiency and liberty for a feeling of safety that is often more performative than practical. We saw a similar pattern of systemic overreaction during the 2008 financial crisis, where the government’s "solution" to a crash ended up distorting the market for a generation.
From the Towers to the Sahel
The war on terrorism was a twenty-year campaign in Afghanistan and a bloody intervention in Iraq. We hunted Osama bin Laden and dismantled the central command of al-Qaida, but the ledger shows the threat didn't vanish—it fragmented.
The Council on Foreign Relations reports a chilling shift: terrorism deaths in the Sahel now account for more than half of all such deaths worldwide, a staggering leap from under 1 percent in 2007. While we were focused on the ruins of the Middle East, the fire spread to Africa. We see the same pattern of instability that led to the Madrid train bombings in 2004—a coordinated strike on civilian infrastructure that proved no Western capital was truly immune.
The "human-centric" narrative currently gaining traction—focusing on intergenerational trauma and the "new sadness" of lost grandparents—is a luxury of the secure. The most capable advocates for this approach argue that we must prioritize humanitarian aid and the psychological healing of the nation to prevent future radicalization. They point to the 100 million Americans too young to remember the attacks as a reason to soften the edges of our history.
They are wrong. You do not prevent radicalization with empathy; you prevent it with a posture that makes the cost of aggression unbearable. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami showed us the power of a global humanitarian response, but a tsunami is an act of God. al-Qaida was an act of will. You cannot "heal" a predator; you can only deter or destroy it.
The Ledger of Remembrance
We owe the first responders a debt that can never be fully paid. KATU reports that more than 600 FDNY members have died from 9/11-related illnesses, with over 10,000 certified with health conditions. The addition of a seventh moment of silence to honor these fallen heroes is a proper tribute. But the greatest tribute we can pay to the 2,977 victims is to ensure their sacrifice wasn't a down payment on a future of managed decline.
The Department of Homeland Security and the TSA are overdue for a strategic purge. We cannot continue to fight the wars of 2001 with the bureaucracy of 2026. We must shift our focus from the ghosts of the Twin Towers to the rising threats in the Sahel and beyond.
If we teach the next generation only that they should be sad, we leave them vulnerable. We must teach them that the flag means what it meant on the flight line: a commitment to a country that is energy-independent, feared by its enemies, and unapologetic about its right to exist in strength.
The lesson of September 11 is not that the world is a place of tragedy, but that weakness is an invitation to disaster. We must stop treating national security as a series of memorials and start treating it as a ledger of power. If we trade our deterrence for a narrative of trauma, we aren't honoring the dead—we are preparing the ground for the next catastrophe.