Twenty-five years ago, on September 11, 2001, terrorists attacked the United States via four hijacked airplanes destined for New York and Washington, D.C., killing 2,977 people and leaving thousands more with lasting physical and mental scars. The United States immediately went to war in Afghanistan, then Iraq shortly after, in the name of fighting terrorism.
There are many lessons to take from how the United States responded to the September 11 attacks, many of which are especially applicable today as the United States begins a new potentially endless war in the Middle East.
There are lessons about Congress’s lack of action to prevent the wars from becoming the debacles they did, lasting far beyond the scopes of their authorizations and ending five presidential terms after they started: Congress could have repealed the Authorizations for Use of Military Force, demanded more oversight or cut funding. They did none of those things.
There are lessons about the Pentagon budget: the Pentagon used the September 11 attacks as a way to ask for increasingly bigger budgets, including in the form of specific War on Terror and Overseas Contingency Operations funds that essentially became slush funds with no accountability. Pentagon spending remains out of control, with the latest funding request topping $1 trillion, and Congress seems happy to give them whatever they ask for with few questions asked.
But most importantly, there are lessons about people. Almost everyone who was alive during the attacks has a story about where they were, what they were doing and what they were thinking as they learned the first plane hitting the World Trade Center was not an accident. Many of us have thought about the events of that day ever since. And many of us who work in national security had our lives and careers shaped by that day, directly or indirectly, and sometimes in ways we may not have even realized.
Three Center staff members were near the attacks that day: one in the Pentagon, one in the Capitol and one just a block from the Capitol. When you read their stories, as well as the stories of other staff members, consider the lessons the United States should have learned over the past 25 years and ask yourself if the country has learned them.
Each one of the 2,977 people killed in the attacks had their own life story, as did the nearly 1 million people killed in the U.S. response to the attacks, and they all should have been able to share their stories with their loved ones.
The American people deserved better than how the United States responded to the September 11 attacks. We can’t undo the past, but we can use what happened 25 years ago to choose a new path forward.
