Special to WorldTribune.com

By John J. Metzler, September 11, 2026

It’s a quarter century since the world changed; 25 years since the horrific September 11th Islamist attacks on the United States uprooted America’s sense of security.

As I wrote on that fateful day, “On a picture perfect blue azure September morning, the Grim Reaper visited New York,” America faced a new Pearl Harbor.

Nearly 3,000 people died in New York, Washington and in rural Pennsylvania that fateful morning.

Being in New York that day, and just having dropped off our daughter at school, there was a kind of surrealistic disconnect; A beautiful September morning, the schoolyard ritual and banter, and then leaving for work. Not twenty minutes later at 8:46 AM later the world in which we lived would soon chaotically unravel amid the staccato of stunning news bulletins from WCBS News radio.

New York City was under terrorist attack!

The shadows of the netherworld soon spread over New York, darkening that bright morning as vicious and unprovoked Al Qaida terror assaulted the City following hijacked commercial jets being flown, like missiles, into the massive Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Before long wall to wall TV coverage presented a chilling but still confusing narrative of what was unfolding from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. Besides a sense of disbelief and shock, most areas experienced a very strange sense of quiet; Flights from the airports were cancelled, there was soon less traffic, yet an incessant soundtrack of sirens continued. Occasionally the roar of F-16 fighter jet overflights replaced the grounded commercial air traffic.

I vividly recall seeing the Twin Towers, still standing like two eerie smokestacks before the backdrop of a bright blue horizon, just before their collapse.

That evening as former President George W. Bush told the nation in a somber address, “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.”

This was so true as first responders, primarily the NY Police and Fire Department went into the burning towers in a massive rescue mission. Over rural Shanksville Pennsylvania, the terrorist hijackers on United Airlines Flight #93 were overwhelmed by passengers, with the immortal call of passenger Todd Beamer, ‘Let’s Roll!’ The hijacked plane, bound for Washington D.C. crashed into a field. Another jet slammed into the Pentagon.

America soon went on offensive in Afghanistan to track down and destroy the Al Qaida terrorists and later would finally catch their mastermind Osama bin Laden. The War on Terror had begun.

Ironically September 11 is often best viewed through the neighborhoods, the traditional tapestry of New York City where the feeling and focus of grief became bitterly acute. The loss of 2,754 civilian employees from the doomed Twin Towers, Police and Fire Department responders, 343 members of FDNY alone, and then the funerals for civilian and first responders alike became part of that now grim September.

But New York and America became amazingly and wonderfully united; this would not last.

October 7, 2023

Israel experienced its own September 11, just three years ago, when Hamas terrorists attacked vulnerable towns, Kibbutzes and a Music festival. Civilians were targeted in an orgy of heinous violence which Hamas proudly chronicled. Over 1,200 Jewish men, women and children were killed that fateful day; hundreds were taken hostage. Then came the terrible swift sword of righteous retribution by the IDF, but this time Israel was seen by so many in the West, and especially American college campuses as the aggressor and an illegitimate state. The long smoldering Palestinian cause reignited in a political firestorm throughout Europe and the USA.

Twenty-Five Year Later

Back in 2001, key political figures included New York’s indefatigable Mayor Rudy Giluiani and Gov. George Pataki, both Republicans which in itself even then was surprising for New York.

Today the Democrats control New York. But this is hardly the traditional center-Left party of the Unions and collectivists, but a radicalized steel-hard Left, not Liberal party, reflecting a massive tilt to an intolerant groupthink reflecting the insurgent Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Open anti-Israel sentiment has become commonplace in New York, with vile voices proclaiming a political benediction for the “progressives.”

Since the attacks a quarter century ago, 100 million people have since been born in the U.S. Moreover, nobody now in high school or even university have any personal memory of that dreadful day.

The aftermath of the attacks changed a generation.

Is the true story of September 11 being taught in schools to counter crackpot conspiracy theories which have often sadly become unquestioned narratives on September 11?

The truth must prevail.

Remember 9/11!

John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of Divided Dynamism the Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China (2014). [See pre-2011 Archives]

  25 years and 100 million new Americans later: May Truth prevail, September 11 shadows