Remembering 9/11: The American Landscape Then and Now

From the man who got stuck on New Jersey Transit and never made it to work in the city, the woman working diligently at a desk in El Paso, the firefighter digging through the rubble and the children who saw the destruction on their television sets as they quietly ate breakfast before school, most Americans remember the impact 9/11 had on their lives.

At 8:46 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, the first plane – American Airlines Flight 11, carrying 92 people aboard – crashed into the 93rd through 99th floors of the North Tower. At 9:03 a.m., a second plane – United Airlines Flight 175, carrying 65 people – hit floors 75 through 85 of the South Tower, which was only able to endure the effects of the impact for 56 minutes.

The attack killed 2,977 people. After the overwhelming plume of dust and debris finished haunting NYC, leaving only the skeletal remains of one of the worst disasters to afflict the island of Manhattan, the landscape of the entire country changed with it.

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For starters, terrorism and national security began filling our national discourse in ways it hadn’t since the Cold War. It gave us faces we became frightened of, names to be aware of and words to describe them that we seldom – if ever – used before: al-Qaeda, Taliban, extremists, militants, Islamists and more. Even the term 9/11 is a marker of its own severity.

The most obvious of these post-9/11 changes is air travel. Gone are the days of running through security minutes before a flight and making it on time. The establishment of the TSA in November 2001 sent more than 400 security officers to airports in just one year, with safety requirements becoming more rigid as failed terror attacks grasped public interest.

Travelers faced random searches, bans on liquids and became accustomed to the dizzying ritual of removing shoes and hurriedly putting them back on.

Anxiety and feelings of insecurity are up, according to Psychology Today, which reported a 25 percent increase in the use of anti-anxiety drugs after the attacks. The report said that it has become more common for some to be put on the defensive by typically harmless events – for instance, a stranger dropping an envelope and its contents falling out – and fostering an atmosphere of distrust.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, however, Americans are back in the swing of things as travelers return, though capacity for them has waned.

It is perhaps Muslim-Americans who experienced the most grievous consequence of the evolving landscape. The number of anti-Islamic hate crimes went up from 28 to 481 in 2001. The number has remained above 100 annually ever since.

A recent Pew Research report shows that 53 percent of Americans are very concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism at home, tying a record high. Another 62 percent worried about its spread worldwide.

The War on Terror itself has become a different war than when it started. Al-Qaeda’s power has been displaced, its leaders removed from its base in Afghanistan, crippled by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan while its affiliate groups are mobilizing faster than ever.

Meanwhile, some nations contemplate raising terror alert levels to “severe” as ISIS in Iraq and Syria becomes a more complex opponent.

Thirteen years later, questions remain open-ended. Security is high. Terror warnings are elevated. Little is certain except for the fact that one day out of the year, Americans return to that place inside themselves when the towers fell and flipped the country upside down for generations to come.