Bin Laden sought Americaโs collapse, but the nation emerged stronger
Major terrorist plots were thwarted, yet political narratives now blur responsibility
On Sept. 11, 2001, the World Trade Center in New York, the heart of global capitalism, was reduced to rubble in an instant. The tragedy, which claimed 2,977 lives, was an attack intended to bring down not only Americaโs security architecture but its political, social and cultural foundations as well.
A quarter-century later, the memory of the tragedy has become another source of division, shaped by political interests. Some politicians on the American left have even mourned the terrorists alongside the victims. More recently, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. instructed its journalists to use the phrase โairplane hijackings that resulted in crashesโ instead of โterrorist attacks.โ These are examples of the tragedy of 9/11 being filtered through ideological and political frames. With the November midterm elections approaching, this 25th anniversary offers an opportunity to revisit the trajectory America has followed since the attacks.
What Al-Qaida Sought to Destroy
What al-Qaida targeted 25 years ago was not merely two buildings in New York. It was the American system itself.
The World Trade Center was the heart of capitalism, and the Pentagon was the symbol of American military power. Osama bin Ladenโs choice of targets reflected a clear worldview: He sought to destabilize what he saw as American imperialism dominating the Islamic world through military force and capital. Bin Laden himself declared that he would make America โbleed until bankruptcy.โ
How, then, did America change?
America Grew Stronger After 9/11
The heart of capitalism did not collapse. The S&P 500, which stood at 1,092.54 on Sept. 10, 2001, the last trading day before the attacks, reached 7,591.70 on Sept. 10, 2026 โ a roughly sevenfold increase. A comparison of Morgan Stanley Capital International country indexes in dollar terms shows the United States far outpacing other major economies: Japan rose fivefold, Germany threefold, China twofold and Britain 1.9-fold. According to the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. economy accounted for 48% of the Group of Sevenโs combined gross domestic product in 2001; recently, that share had risen to 59%. The United States remains the worldโs largest economy.
Militarily, events also unfolded differently from what al-Qaida had envisioned. Despite fighting two prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the share of active-duty U.S. troops stationed overseas is lower than it was at the time of 9/11. According to USAFacts, a nonprofit public data platform, roughly 255,000 of Americaโs approximately 1.38 million active-duty personnel โ about 18% โ were stationed abroad just before 9/11. Today, that figure has fallen to about 170,000, or 13%.
The alliance system al-Qaida sought to dismantle did not disintegrate either. Immediately after 9/11, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization invoked Article 5, its collective-defense clause, for the first time since NATO was founded in 1949. The alliance, which had 19 member countries at the time, now has 32.
The 9/11 attacks were a tactical success for the terrorists but a strategic failure in war. In a column published by The Free Press on Sept. 10, historian Niall Ferguson argued that โthe end of American imperialism did not come after 9/11โ and that what is truly in decline is not American power. His reasoning was that although the United States faces serious problems, the authoritarian axis โ China, Russia, Iran and North Korea โ confronts far more severe risks of collapse stemming from unemployment, demographic decline and the costs of war.
How America Rebuilt Its Security System
Americaโs defense apparatus changed completely. The most consequential vulnerability exposed by 9/11 was the โinformation silosโ separating intelligence agencies. To dismantle those barriers, the United States created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center in 2004. Information scattered across the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency and other agencies was brought together, shifting the investigative paradigm toward preventing attacks before they occurred. The Transportation Security Administration was also established in November 2001, and the Secure Flight system was later introduced to identify high-risk passengers beginning at the ticket-purchase stage.
As a result, no foreign terrorist organization has carried out another attack on the U.S. homeland on the scale of 9/11 in the past 25 years. According to a Heritage Foundation counterterrorism and security report, law enforcement agencies disrupted 53 of 60 major terrorist plots targeting the United States after 9/11.
Citing such evidence, former U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman said, โAmerica is safer than it was before 2001.โ An attack intended to expose Americaโs vulnerability instead became the catalyst for fortifying its greatest weakness.
The consequences for the terrorists themselves were direct. Bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in 2011, and his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was eliminated in 2022. Al-Qaida lost its base in Afghanistan.
The Cost of Americaโs Response
Victory did not come without cost. The United States lost trillions of dollars and thousands of service members in Afghanistan and Iraq, only to watch the Taliban return to power in Afghanistan 20 years later. Bin Ladenโs war of attrition failed, but it did not leave America unscarred. As time passed, moreover, an unexpected internal conflict began to emerge. The American consensus over how the attacks should be remembered has begun to fracture. The left, in particular, has applied partisan logic and used the tragedy as a vehicle for political messaging.
Abdul El-Sayed, who recently won Michiganโs Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, is one example. In a post marking the 20th anniversary of 9/11 in 2021, he wrote that after mourning the victims of 9/11, he would spend the following day mourning the roughly 1 million people killed in Americaโs wars. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has repeatedly delivered a similar message. Both are left-wing Muslims.
National Review characterized this as a tactic of whataboutism. By placing the deliberate terrorist targeting of civilians on the same plane as casualties suffered by the other side during Americaโs response, the magazine argued, they seek to obscure responsibility for the attacks. It said the tactic resembled Soviet propaganda that invoked unrelated events to blur the essence of accountability.
Criticizing the errors and civilian casualties of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is, of course, reasonable. So, too, is criticism of the expanded government surveillance and prejudice against Muslims and immigrants that followed 9/11.
The problem arises when such criticism relativizes even the causes of and responsibility for the attacks. The issue has grown more complicated amid partisan conflict following Hamasโ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the war in Gaza that followed. On college campuses in particular, some have gone so far as to justify Hamasโ attacks on Israeli civilians as โresistance,โ while others have equated all Jews with the Israeli government.
A New Terrorist Threat Is Emerging
As America wrestles with internal turmoil, the nature of terrorism is changing. Terrorists no longer need a single organization to spend years preparing to hijack multiple airliners simultaneously, as they did in 2001. Drones, artificial intelligence, encrypted communications and online radicalization have placed capabilities once available only to large terrorist organizations within the reach of small groups and individuals. Christina McAllister of the Stimson Center, a think tank, said that โthe proliferation of technology is lowering the barriers to entry for weapons of mass destruction.โ
The Lasting Legacy of 9/11
The legacy 9/11 left America is not limited to integrated intelligence agencies and stringent security checkpoints. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Americans crossed religious and racial lines to donate blood, participate in rescue efforts and raise relief funds. Respect also grew for firefighters, police officers, military personnel and others who wear uniforms in the service of the public. The word โresilienceโ became established as an important social value in responding to crises.
Reflecting on that period on Sept. 9, former President George W. Bush said he had wanted people to remember how precious freedom is in the course of defending it. At the same time, he expressed concern that as time passes, the meaning of the service and sacrifice shown that day is more likely to be forgotten.
There is a message to be drawn from the words of the president who led America at the time.
Criticize the mistakes of war without obscuring responsibility for terrorism. Protect minorities without lowering the guard against religious extremism. Give the government the power to protect its people without allowing that power to consume their freedom. Preserving that balance is the most important task the Sept. 11 attacks have left America 25 years later.
