People watch and take pictures as a drone light show depicting the twin towers appears in the skyline during testing of Tribute in Light installation in lower Manhattan on September 9, 2026, as seen from Liberty State Park in Jersey City, New Jersey. Getty Images See more of our coverage in your search results.
Add The New York Post on Google More than 100 million of today’s Americans weren’t yet born a quarter century ago, on the day of the greatest act of mass murder on US soil; however incredible it seems to those who lived through 9/11, those events are fading from collective memory — yet some lessons must last.
Islamist fanatics launched an invidious attack on us, the West and Western values; their weapons were the products of Western technology, aimed as missiles at twin marvels of Western engineering.
They killed 3,000 Americans before noon on a cloudless Tuesday morning.
The terrorists targeted symbols of America’s greatness: The Twin Towers of New York City, emblems of capitalism and liberty; the Pentagon, the center of American might, and (most likely) the Capitol, where democracy lives and breathes.
Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the evil assault and spiritual leader of the death-worshipping al Qaeda cult, issued a 1998 fatwa calling it the “individual duty of every Muslim” to “kill the Americans and their allies, military and civilian.”
The plot was intended to spark a holy war, bringing down all Muslim governments in favor of a Caliphate that would rule by the laws of 7th century Arabia, and to collapse the morale of the decadent West.
For the people the terrorists killed were not abstract symbols of ruthless capitalism or Western imperialism, but real men and women of all ages, races and creeds, from at least 90 nations: cops, bankers, janitors and secretaries; parents, spouses, sons and daughters, friends and lovers — and Americans responded accordingly.
The stories of those we lost are part of the lessons that must last, to keep their memories alive, and to keep fresh our purpose going forward in defense of the American way of life and in opposition to the enemy that took their lives.
The first certified victim of the 9/11 attacks was Fr. Mychal Judge, a beloved priest and FDNY chaplain well-known for his good works, especially his ministry to people dying of AIDS.
When American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower at 8:46, Fr. Mychal ran to the firehouse near his friary on West 31st Street, riding downtown with his brother firefighters; he spent his last hour on Earth consoling the injured, praying for mercy and offering Last Rites to the dying before he was killed by debris from the collapse of the South Tower at 9:59.
Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett, Jeremy Glick and other passengers from Newark to San Francisco called loved ones after United Airlines Flight 93 was hijacked and learned that America was under attack: They resolved not to let the terrorists carry out the plan to crash the plane into the Capitol or the White House — and, with Beamer famously exhorting, “Let’s roll,” joined to storm the cockpit and wrest control of the plane from the hijackers.
Flight 93 crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pa, killing all aboard but saving the lives of countless others.
Tales of heroism from 9/11 are in no short supply.
NYPD Officer John William Perry was filling out his retirement papers at One Police Plaza when he heard that the North Tower had been struck; he asked for his shield back and raced toward the danger.
Perry was last seen assisting a woman out of the South Tower before going back in to help others. He died, along with 22 of his NYPD brethren, in the tower’s collapse.
Firefighter Stephen Siller had finished his shift at Brooklyn Squad 1 when he heard of the attack; determined to serve, he drove toward Manhattan only to find the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel already closed . . . whereupon he strapped on his 60 pounds of gear and ran on foot through the 1.75 mile tunnel to the Word Trade Center, where he died helping civilians — one of 343 of our Bravest to lose his life that day.
As countless such stories show, the 9/11 attacks completely failed to demoralize America: Instead, we came together — in mourning and in purpose — in a way almost unimaginable today.
How unimaginable? Hundreds of members of Congress of both parties joined spontaneously on the Capitol steps to sing “God Bless America” — harmoniously.
Young people who today look around America and see only division and mistrust need to understand, to feel, that sense of unity.
Some now instead push twisted narratives: Tenured radicals and glib podcasters insist that America “deserved” to be attacked; it was “blowback” from our benighted foreign policy and karmic retribution for our many evils, with the devastation of 9/11 secondary to the (entirely mythical) Islamophobic persecution that followed.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch spoke Wednesday of the necessity of “moral clarity” as we contemplate and communicate the meaning of 9/11.
“The men who attacked this city were terrorists,” she said firmly and without quibble.
“The men and women who ran into the towers to save innocent lives were heroes.
“Twenty-five years cannot be allowed to blur that distinction, and shame on those who do.”
Amen, Commissioner. Let that clarity stand forever, so that our children’s children and their children children know the villainy and heroism of that day and carry along the lessons of 9/11 in their heads and hearts.
