The weather on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was picture perfect across most of the country. For thousands of early risers that morning, particularly those with 8:00 a.m. flights out of Boston, Newark, and Dulles Airports or long commutes to the Pentagon or New York City’s financial district, this required waking up while it was still dark.
These dear souls went about the ordinary routines of life on what began as an unremarkable morning: kissing sleeping spouses and children still in bed; stopping for coffee or breakfast on the run; parking a car; catching a train; reading a paper. And the one thing that nearly 3,000 of these early risers had in common is that they would never again in this life see the people they loved the most—the children (many unborn), the parents, the spouses, the fiancés, and so many others.
Another early riser that fateful day was Mohammed Atta. He and a conspirator caught a short 6:00 a.m. flight from Portland to Boston, where they connected with a 7:45 flight to Los Angeles. Few Americans today know the name Mohammed Atta. Yet this forgotten mass murderer was the tactical commander of the 19 terrorists responsible for the heinous attacks of 9/11. American Airlines Flight 11, carrying 77 passengers and 11 crew members, was only 15 minutes into its journey to Los Angeles when Atta and four other terrorist hijackers struck. At 8:46, the commandeered flight plowed into tower 1 of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. By 10:00, United Airlines Flight 175 hit tower 2, AA Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, and UA Flight 93 plunged into a Shanksville, Pa. field, all resulting in the deaths of 2,972 innocent people and injuries to thousands more.
The 33-year-old Atta met multiple times with Osama bin Laden in the planning of the attacks, and he even picked the day of September 11. Raised in a highly educated and devout Muslim family in Egypt, Atta earned an architectural engineering degree at Cairo University in 1990. Several years later, he pursued graduate studies in Hamburg, Germany, where he became radicalized at an extremist mosque. It was there that he met Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, the eventual pilots of Flights 175 and 93, respectively. In 1999, an al-Qaeda recruiter sent them to Afghanistan for training where they met and swore allegiance to bin Laden. They were also judged to be good candidates for the “Planes Operation.” By the summer of 2000, Atta, al-Shehhi, and Jarrah were attending flight school in Southwest Florida.
What did allegiance to bin Laden entail? Well, in 1998, Osama bin Laden issued a “fatwa”—a religious decree—declaring war on America. It read in part, “The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilian and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it…. We—with Allah’s help—call on every Muslim who believes in Allah and wishes to be rewarded to comply with Allah’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it.”
It was to this despicable directive that Atta and others dedicated their lives.
Remembering the name Mohammed Atta is far less important than remembering the horrors of that dark historic morning and revering the heroism of so many of our fellow citizens. From the first responders in Manhattan to the passengers of Flight 93 who saved the U.S. Capitol Building—the terrorists’ target—there were countless acts of self-sacrifice which clearly demonstrated the strength and resiliency of the American spirit.
Now, a quarter century later, my fear is that public resolve to oppose Islamic extremism continues to wane. An entire generation born after 2001 has been impacted more by the proponents of antisemitism, defunding police, and ending immigration enforcement than the accounts of unprecedented suffering on American soil caused by those 19 malevolent jihadists and al-Qaeda leadership. Some influential voices prefer to erase and excuse the past and even enable future terrorist bloodshed. For example, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation recently instructed its journalists not to refer to the 9/11 attacks as acts of terrorism. Following widespread objections to this guidance, the CBC reversed course. And then there’s Hasan Piker, the radical leftist streamer who actively supports socialist Democratic candidates. He said in 2019 that “America deserved 9/11.” He now admits this “was a dumb thing to say”—not exactly an unambiguous denial of the underlying sentiment.
Hamas is not al-Qaeda, but terrorism should never invoke public sympathy. A surprise attack on innocent people at an outdoor music festival is the same sort of wickedness that brought down the Twin Towers. But even more troubling are the thousands of leaders, many of whom hold political office, who wish to defund the police and push for open borders. The men and women of law enforcement are America’s front line against terrorist plots. Through solid police work, they have foiled many attempts since 9/11. And but for the work of immigration authorities, a fifth plane may have been hijacked 25 years ago and flown into the White House. If we are serious about preventing another 9/11, we must support our police and enforce our immigration laws.
The enemy of our cherished values is patient and determined. In 1993, Ramzi Yousef, the nephew of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, organized the bombing of the World Trade Center. Six people were killed, more than 1,000 were injured, and 50,000 people were forced to evacuate the Twin Towers. This plot was an extremely significant event in the eyes of aspiring terrorists. They correctly perceived America as being vulnerable to a major act of terrorism.
The first WTC attack was followed in 1996 by the bombing of the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 U.S. Air Force personnel. Two years later, it was the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, where al-Qaeda terrorists killed more than 200 people. Then, in October 2000, al-Qaeda operatives bombed a Navy destroyer, the USS Cole, taking the lives of 17 crew members.
That this sequence of attacks did not continue after 9/11 is a tribute to God’s kind providence and President George W. Bush’s decisive response. America’s counterterrorism efforts, including the near elimination of al-Qaeda’s capabilities, has been extraordinarily successful. But the hatred revealed in bin Laden’s fatwa still exists. Milestone anniversaries such as this year’s are an important opportunity to remember what happened and to strengthen our resolve to aggressively combat Islamic extremism for generations to come.