9/11 anniversary: Twenty years on, US and the world face a painful reflection of a life-changing moment
In the spot where the Twin Towers once stood, there is now a calmness – a peace in the heart of New York City.
The only sound is water, cascading endlessly into two vast square voids, one for each tower.
They are voids that will never be filled, representing holes for so many who mourn the loss of so many more.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
9/11: How the day unfolded
On the tip of Manhattan, the scene is set to reflect on nearly 3,000 lives lost and a moment that changed the world.
The ceremony will begin at 8.40am New York time (1.40pm UK) – six minutes before the first plane hit the north tower 20 years ago – on September 11 2001.
Former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama will join President Joe Biden for a ceremony punctuated by six stark moments of silence: three to mark the planes hitting the two towers and the Pentagon in Washington, two to mark the collapse of each tower, and one to mark the moment the fourth plane came down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
President George W Bush will be in Shanksville for the ceremony there, and President Donald Trump will mark the day with a series of as-yet-unpublished stops.
Over the coming hours, relatives and survivors will share their stories and reflect on their individual loss.
Flight crews will gather in uniform, pausing for their lost colleagues – their friends.
Firefighters, many too young to remember 9/11, will pay their respects to those who ran towards danger to rescue those trapped in the towers, including the first responders who lost their lives.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
‘We wondered if we were still alive’
Over two hours, the names of each of those to die that day will be read out, one by one.
Twenty years ago, President George W Bush was at Ground Zero, megaphone in hand, reflecting the mood of a nation consumed by a deep trauma and a bewilderment that demanded revenge.
“The people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon,” he declared.
Who would have thought that presidential vow all those years ago would be a central thread through three more American presidencies and define our collective history in the subsequent two decades.
Long conflicts in Afghanistan, then Iraq, followed. A “war on terror” waged. By definition, it required a victory that would always be elusive.
So many lives were lost in the past two decades.
The US was consumed by revenge but also wrapped up in a desire to change and remake the world according to its own image and to achieve that by force.
Increasingly it proved to be a futile and dangerous objective that brought out the worst in America. In trying to export its own values, the US was in fact repudiating them.
Key moments would be proved over time to have been mistakes causing irrevocable damage.
The missed opportunities such as the failure to capture bin Laden in the Afghan mountains in November 2001. He was to escape into Pakistan and evade capture for a decade.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
What is the legacy of 9/11?
Policy decisions such as diverting attention away from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2003 on the elusive hunt for weapons of mass destruction.
Then there was the CIA rendition flights, the torture, the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and of course Guantanamo.
Twenty years after 9/11, 40 prisoners remain at Guantanamo. Most have not been charged, none have yet faced trial. They include the 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
The latest inflection point in these past two decades has been Mr Biden’s chaotic retreat from Afghanistan. History is yet to judge the wisdom of that decision.
The legacy of 9/11 has been dramatic and it is enduring.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
9/11 British survivor: ‘It shifted my world’
Twenty years might have helped individuals to begin to heal, but collectively, for America and well beyond, two decades of conflict has stirred so much and healed almost nothing.
Professor Bruce Hoffman, senior fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations, told me this week: “I think the sad truth of the matter is that if bin Laden were alive today, he’d be a happy man.
“Firstly, the enterprise that he commenced over three decades ago has withstood what really is the technologically most advanced military in the history of mankind and survived. It has continually overcome whatever setbacks have been meted out to it. And now that we see with the victory of the Taliban, the Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan, which was always bin Laden’s kind of pet project, has once again been resurrected.”
He added: “But more to the point, according to the US State Department list of foreign terrorist organisations, there are now four times as many Salafi jihadi groups that adhere to bin Laden’s ideology today than there were on 9/11.”
For New York, for America and well beyond, this will be painful reflection of such an extraordinary moment.
US
Democrat senator Chris Van Hollen who met wrongly deported man Kilmar Abrego Garcia says photos of pair with margaritas are staged
The Democrat senator who flew to meet the man wrongly deported to El Salvador has said photos of them with margaritas were staged by officials working for the country’s president.
Chris Van Hollen added that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported from the US last month, told him he has been moved from a notorious high-security prison in El Salvador to a detention centre with better conditions.
The deportation of Mr Garcia has become a flashpoint in the US, with Democrats casting it as a cruel consequence of Donald Trump’s disregard for the courts, while Republicans have criticised Democrats for defending him and argued his deportation is part of a larger effort to reduce crime.
Mr Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who was living in Maryland, is being detained in the Central American country despite the US Supreme Court calling on the White House to facilitate his return home.
Trump officials have said Mr Garcia has ties to the violent MS-13 gang. However, Mr Garcia’s attorneys say the government has provided no evidence, and he has never been charged with any crime related to such activity.
Mr Van Hollen flew to El Salvador and met with Mr Garcia this week in an effort to help secure his return to America.
Chris Van Hollen and Kilmar Abrego Garcia, seen in a photo shared by El Salvador’s president. Pic: Nayib Bukele on X
Van Hollen (right) says margaritas were later brought to the table. Pic: Press Office Senator Van Hollen/AP
Speaking to reporters at Washington Dulles International airport after returning to the US on Friday, Mr Van Hollen said: “As the federal courts have said, we need to bring Mr Abrego Garcia home to protect his constitutional rights to due process. And it’s also important that people understand this case is not just about one man.
“It’s about protecting the constitutional rights of everybody who resides in the United States of America.”
Mr Van Hollen added the Trump administration is “asserting a right to stash away residents of this country” in foreign prisons “without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order”.
The senator also revealed Mr Garcia was brought from a detention centre to his hotel after initial requests to meet or speak with him were denied.
Mr Van Hollen said Mr Garcia told him he was “traumatised” after being detained at El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, but he had been moved to a “different facility” with better conditions nine days ago.
The senator said Mr Garcia told him he was worried about his family and that thinking about them was giving him “the strength to persevere” and to “keep going” under awful circumstances.
Mr Garcia’s wife, Jennifer, was at the news conference and wiped away tears as Mr Van Hollen spoke of her husband’s desire to speak to her.
Earlier, Mr Van Hollen had posted photos of himself meeting with Mr Garcia.
Chris Van Hollen speaks at Washington Dulles International Airport. Pic: AP
It came before El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele shared his own images of the meeting, which he claimed showed the pair “sipping margaritas” in the “tropical paradise of El Salvador”.
In an apparent sarcastic remark, Mr Bukele wrote that Mr Garcia had “miraculously risen” from the “death camps”.
Giving an account of what he says happened when the photos were taken, Mr Van Hollen said: “We just had glasses of water on the table. I think maybe some coffee.
“And as we were talking, one of the government people came over and deposited two other glasses on the table with ice. And I don’t know if it was salt or sugar round the top, but they looked like margaritas.
“If you look at the one they put in front of Kilmer, it actually had a little less liquid than the one in me in front of me to try to make it look, I assume like he drank out of it.
“Let me just be very clear. Neither of us touched the drinks that were in front of us.”
He added that people can tell he is telling the truth because if someone had sipped from one of the glass there would be a “gap” where the “salt or sugar” had disappeared.
Mr Van Hollen said the image shows the “lengths” the El Salvadorian president will go to “deceive people about what’s going on”.
“It also shows the lengths that the Trump administration and [President Trump] will go to, because when he was asked by a reporter about this, he just went along for the ride.”
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway