By Andrew Adler
Community Editor
National 9/11 Memorial & Museum (Photo by Ben Hider)
The capacity for human beings to inflict mayhem on one another should never be underestimated.
As I write this, the sun is going down on what was Sept. 11, 2026. Like many others, I have spent this day recalling where I was 25 years earlier – not simply in terms of literal location, but also my mindset on that morning as I sought to reconcile a torrent of conflicting emotions. A quarter-century later, I am still trying to parse those thoughts and feelings, filtered through the lens of present-day realities.
When American Airlines Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center’s North Tower at 8:46 a.m., I was finishing a late breakfast in my then-home on Millvale Road, a few minutes’ leisurely stroll from Congregation Adath Jeshurun. My two-year-old son attended AJ Preschool, and his very pregnant mother and I were anticipating the any-day-now arrival of his sister. In other words, it was a conspicuously happy time for our family.
September 11 shattered that complacency. Like people the world over, I watched with accelerating horror as United Flight 75 plowed into the South Tower, producing an immense fireball that confirmed our worst fears: This was no accident, but an act of deliberate, murderous terrorism.
Moments later, my phone rang. It was my mother calling from our apartment on West 86th Street in Manhattan, less than five miles from Ground Zero, close enough to see the black smoke obliterating the adjacent horizon. Customarily a woman who kept her emotions safely tucked away, now her words were tumbling out with a velocity that bordered on incoherence. They were the sounds of rising panic.
Disbelief compounded as the morning wore on — a third plane hitting the Pentagon as staff fled the White House and the Capitol; everyone wondering whether more planes were headed for some other doomed, piteous destination. We didn’t yet know that a fourth aircraft – United Flight 93 – would crash into a field in near rural Shanksville, Penn. after its 40 passengers and crew fought four hijackers, preventing the Boeing 757-222 from reaching its intended target: the U.S. Capitol.
It is difficult to reconcile the awfulness of that day, even a quarter-century afterward. So, too, is the implausibility of coming to terms with the events of October 7, 2023. Unlike its 9/11 predecessor, the violence of October 7 had a grotesque intimacy – shootings and stabbings, burnings, sexual violence, much of it recorded and disseminated on social media by perpetrators bent on inflicting maximum physical pain and mental anguish.
Each of these dates produced parallel reactions, a shared determination to strike back in spasms of blind fury and vengeance. Whether Al Queda or Hamas, Afghanistan or Gaza, America or Israel – the impetus was largely the same. Left unanswered, however, was the question of efficacy. Yes, we took out Osama Bin Laden and Yahya Sinwar, and there was justifiable satisfaction in holding these despicable men to account. Still, can we honestly say that we achieved victory of a genuine, enduring sort?
Al Qaeda gave way to ISIS and a cascading array of successor actors: September 11’s terroristic, stubborn close cousins. Hamas is diminished yet hardly vanquished, continuing to hold sway amid the rubble of its so-called constituency. Tens of thousands of Gazan civilians have perished, with Israel having achieved the status of pariah state. There is a vague promise of reconstruction, though thus far there is scant evidence of progress toward that goal.
More elusive than reconstruction, though, is reconciliation. When it seemed that September 11 was consigned to the intermediate storage bin of history, its 25th anniversary brought the event back into memory’s tumultuous foreground. Just as we did in 2001, we must again face up to an uncomfortable truth: Mere physical might is not enough to produce lasting peace.
Our enemies will often muster the kind of resistance and resilience that confounds expectations of swift, straightforward victory. The war/conflict with Iran (and its Houthi proxy), which lately has been spilling over to Saudi Arabia and has a distinctly quagmire look and feel, is the most conspicuous of cautionary tales.
So here I sit, sifting through the fallout of these two dates, when the Universe spun wildly on its axis and was poised to veer off into uncharted space. They foreshadowed a time when it’s harder and harder to believe in the goodness of humankind. If that smacks of creeping pessimism – well, life has a way of confounding even the sunniest of outlooks. Such are the wages of evil.
Andrew Adler is Managing Editor of Community.