At the 25th anniversary of September 11, veterans, mourners, and analysts reflect on the attacks and their aftermath
On September 11, 2001, 19 hijackers flew four commercial aircraft into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing 2,977 people from more than 90 nations. The 25th anniversary of the attacks was marked with memorial ceremonies, including at the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City. Coverage across outlets examined veterans' experiences, the persistence of conspiracy theories, and the human cost of a day that reshaped American foreign policy for two decades.
The quarter-century mark brought different reflections depending on who was asked. NPR's Scott Simon described walking the streets of Lower Manhattan after the attacks, past photographs of the missing pasted on lampposts — husbands, daughters, fathers, friends — and quoted a poem honoring the 43 members of a hotel workers' union who died at Windows on the World atop the North Tower. The piece emphasized the international composition of the victims: the 2,977 killed came from more than 90 countries, and the restaurant's kitchen workers hailed from Ecuador, Mexico, Haiti, Yemen, Ghana, and Bangladesh, among others.
Fox News spoke with five veterans whose trajectories were shaped by that morning. Some were already in uniform; others, including a teenager who saw news coverage in his high school classroom and a businessman moose hunting in remote Alaska, chose to enlist afterward. All described a shared motivation: keeping the fight away from American soil. Twenty-five years later, their reflections were more complicated, centering not on the decision to serve but on the wars that followed and what the country ultimately made of their sacrifices.
Several veterans drew a distinction between the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq. John Byrnes, now a strategic director at Concerned Veterans for America, told Fox News the decision to go to Afghanistan was "absolutely necessary" but the decision to go to Iraq "was not necessary." Rep. Troy Downing, R-Mont., who enlisted at age 34 after the attacks and served in combat search and rescue in Afghanistan, described the 2021 withdrawal under former President Biden as "a blemish" that "squandered everything that we gained there." Marine veteran Brandon Newberry, who spent roughly seven years in Afghanistan including time as a contractor, said the conclusion of the war left him feeling he had "failed the Afghan people."