9/11 2001 11 years since attack

[Wendy Summers]

I work near the site where it happened and it is a sad reminder when I pass by and see the memoral. Yet I am happy to see the rebuilding and the Freedom Tower reaching new heights. So every 9/11 will be a humble day to reflect but we also rebuild and move forward to show that US will always get up and dust themselves off and to keep going.

I think it's tough for folks who don't live in our area to get how constant the reminders still are. I drove into Manhattan on Sunday and as I got near all I could think about was how weird it still is for the towers not to be there. I was lucky enough that everyone I knew got out ok;I can't imagine what it's like for folks who knew some one lost at the Towers.

[danthepoetman]

I think what makes it worst is that it is still an ongoing process, I mean, not the reconstruction, but the war on terror. There’s hardly anything yet to help getting some real closure on this. We don’t have much perspective on it, not any distance (11 years is not much in history), but I suspect 9/11/01 will be eventually seen as an important historical date at which the world strategic stakes have changed. The last decade has seen profound changes in the Middle East. But there are still some major threats. I personally see the Iranian situation as a possible extension of those historical events.

[Los Angeles resident]

I grew up in Manhattan and made my first trip to the top of Tower Two shortly after the release of the "King Kong" remake. I made about a dozen trips to the observation deck from 1977 to 1994.

From 1986 to 1990 I used to work for a firm in the Wall Street area which required me to make monthly trips to Tower One.

I was living in Phoenix on 9/11. About less than ten minutes after the first plane hit Tower One, my clock radio, tuned to a radio station that picked up CBS radio news, went on and was broadcasting some guy shouting into his microphone about a building on fire. Soon, I heard the words "World Trade Center" and thought they were playing a tape of the first attack on the WTC in 1993. Then the Phoenix announcer came on and said that was a live feed from WCBS Newsradio 88 and mentioned that a plane had just crashed into the WTC.

I quickly got up and put on the TV in my living room and saw the horrible sight of a big hole in Tower One with black smoke bellowing out. This was about 5:59am Phoenix time (8:59am NY time). Being that I was still waking up, it was hard for me to tell what kind of plane crashed into the building. I thought it was a freak accident. Then within minutes, I saw the second plane fly right into Tower Two. Up until then, I was never the kind of person to cry over anything I see on TV or in the movies. That time, I cried. I knew it was no accident. My birth city, where my family still lives, was under attack. I tried calling my parents but couldn't get though (someone accidentally cut my parents' phone line the day before) leaving me to think wrongly that the attacks were leading people to jamming the phone lines in NY. I then shoot off an E-mail to tell them to E-mail me back to let me know they're OK. At that time, I assumed that other parts of NY other than lower Manhattan would be attacked.

Half and hour later, Bush went on TV to announce to the world the U.S. was under attack. Shortly afterwards, reports were coming in of black plumes of smoke bellowing out of the Pentagon. There are unconfirmed reports that a third plane had just crashed there. Now I'm thinking other parts of the country was about to be attacked. I call my boss at work and ask her if security has asked employees to return home. She said no it was going to be another work day but admitted that almost everybody was glued to the TV and radio.

I take a shower then head to my car to drive the hour's drive to work. By now it's 7:00am Phoenix time (10am NY time). The radio was reporting that Tower Two had just collapsed. I turn the radio off. I arrive at work just before 8am Phoenix time/11am NY time and my boss told me that Tower One had also collapsed and that a fourth plane had crashed in Pennsylvania. Thirty minutes later, I arrive at another unit as part of my daily routine, they had the TV on and for the first time, I saw the video of one of the towers collapsing. I was horrified.

That day was like no other.

[robertlouis]

I think what makes it worst is that it is still an ongoing process, I mean, not the reconstruction, but the war on terror. There’s hardly anything yet to help getting some real closure on this. We don’t have much perspective on it, not any distance (11 years is not much in history), but I suspect 9/11/01 will be eventually seen as an important historical date at which the world strategic stakes have changed. The last decade has seen profound changes in the Middle East. But there are still some major threats. I personally see the Iranian situation as a possible extension of those historical events.

I agree with you about historical perspective, cf Chou en Lai and the French Revolution, but 11 years on it's impossible to see any lasting benefits or hard outcomes from the so-called war on terror, whether it's in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else. It was a misconceived idea from the start, insisting on using conventional military methods to combat an entirely unconventional enemy.

It's only latterly with the use of drone attacks and targeted one-off strikes that there's been any real success. In the meantime hundreds, thousands of allied soldiers have died and countless thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians have been caught in the crossfire.

In the wake of the horror and tragedy that was September 11 2001, it's just a shame that wiser and more reflective heads weren't in charge of the west's initial response. Would it have been any better? I don't know, but it almost certainly couldn't have been any worse.

[Prospero]

I had just completed a month's work in Manhattan including a whole day spent in the company of the people who worked at Windows on The World. Good decent people. Many would have died that day because of the early morning launch event taking place in the restaurant. I cried at the news for the faces still in my mind gave it an immediate human scale. It was an act of infamy. It did change the world.

But 11 years on - I really don't think we are any wiser or the world a better place.

And when the West withdraws from Afghanistan the people who supported the perpetrators will return very quickly.