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From Peshawar to Portland
The “Forever Wars” triggered by 9/11 are still being fought, and they may have reached your doorstep
It was beautiful, fresh, blue-sky day. The fall season and its sense of new beginnings were in the air. As I walked my then 5-year-old to her third day of kindergarten in downtown Brooklyn, she stretched an arm upward, pointing. “Look, Mama,” she said. “What’s that funny cloud?”
“Oh no!” I exclaimed, on seeing the steel-gray streak cleave the firmament like the mark of an angry Sharpie. “There must be a terrible fire in lower Manhattan.” I did not know that just moments before, at 8:46 am, terrorists linked to al-Qaeda turned American Airlines Flight 11 into a missile and drove it into the North tower of the World Trade Center.
As I exited the school building at roughly 9:03 am, United Airlines Flight 175 rammed the South tower. That’s when I realized the “terrible fire” was not the result of a tragic accident. Within 1 hour and 42 minutes, both 110-story towers collapsed, killing 2,977 people, including 343 firefighters, 72 NYC law enforcement officers, and everyone on board both planes. Another 25,000 or more were physically injured. But no one would escape the fallout of the single deadliest terrorist attack in human history.
