Why is 911 so important

There were more than foreign inmates at the facility by Critics have long pushed to shut down the Guantanamo facility, calling it a gross violation of basic human rights and a stain on America's image abroad. And although early in his first term, Obama vowed to close it — and significantly reduced the population — he failed to completely shut it down. Former President Donald Trump was intent on keeping it open, and even sought, unsuccessfully, to refill it.

Today, Guantanamo has fewer than 40 prisoners , but still remains operational. Meanwhile, the budgets of the Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration and Border Patrol have all more than doubled since Over the last 20 years, millions of young U. Department of Defense. That marks just a tiny fraction of total casualties in the two conflicts, which have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians, as well as contractors, journalists, allied troops and opposition fighters.

Meanwhile, more than 52, U. And many more have returned home physically intact but suffering from severe long-term mental health issues, like post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD , depression and psychological ailments linked to traumatic brain injury TBI. Thousands of veterans of the two conflicts have taken their own lives.

They left behind children. Four of the 13 U. Occurring just days before the official end of U. Immigration and Deportation The Bush Administration created the Department of Homeland Security in , a cabinet-level office that merged 22 government agencies. The Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U. Customs Service -- both formerly part of the Department of Justice -- were consolidated into the newly formed U.

While that number dropped slightly in , it began to steadily climb the following year. In the first two years of the Obama Administration - , deportations hit a record high: nearly , annually. About half of those deported during that period were convicted of a criminal offense, although mostly low-level, non-violent crimes. The Secure Communities program, established in and officially phased out in , allowed local law enforcement to check the immigration status of every person booked in a county or local jail -- even if not ultimately convicted of a crime -- by comparing fingerprints against federal immigration records.

The program resulted in numerous instances of undocumented immigrants entering deportation proceedings after being stopped for minor infractions like not using a turn signal while driving. At the Pentagon, people were killed, including 64 on American Airlines Flight 77, the airliner that struck the building. On Flight 93 , 44 people died when the plane crash-landed in Pennsylvania. Bush , who was in Florida at the time of the attacks and had spent the day being shuttled around the country because of security concerns, returned to the White House.

These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve. In a reference to the eventual U. Within two months, U. Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11th attacks, remained at large until May 2, , when he was finally tracked down and killed by U. In June , then-President Barack Obama announced the beginning of large-scale troop withdrawals from Afghanistan; it took until August for all U.

It was signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 25, Today, the Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet responsible for preventing terror attacks, border security, immigrations and customs and disaster relief and prevention.

Mohammed led propaganda operations for al Qaeda from In August , a U. On the first day of trading after the attacks, the market fell 7. The heaviest losses were in finance and air transportation, which accounted for 60 percent of lost jobs. Thousands of first responders and people working and living in lower Manhattan near Ground Zero were exposed to toxic fumes and particles emanating from the towers as they burned and fell.

The Victim Compensation Fund was set to stop accepting claims in December The first memorials to September 11 came in the immediate wake of the attacks, with candlelight vigils and flower tributes at U.

For the first anniversary of the attacks in New York City in , two bright columns of light were shot up into the sky from where the Twin Towers once stood. On clear nights, the beams are visible from over 60 miles away. It consists of two reflecting pools with waterfalls rushing down where the Twin Towers once rose into the sky. The names of all 2, victims are engraved on the bronze panels surrounding the pools, arranged by where individuals were on the day of the attacks, so coworkers and people on the same flight are memorialized together.

New York Magazine. September 11th Terror Attacks Fast Facts. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!

Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. On September 11, —a clear, sunny, late summer day—al Qaeda terrorists aboard three hijacked passenger planes carried out coordinated suicide attacks against the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.

As the country comes to grips with the tumultuous exit of U. This examination of how the United States changed in the two decades following the Sept. Current data is from a Pew Research Center survey of 10, U. Most of the interviewing was conducted before the Aug. This way nearly all U. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U. Here are the questions used for the report, along with responses, and its methodology. Americans were enraged by the attacks, too.

Fear was widespread, not just in the days immediately after the attacks, but throughout the fall of When asked a year later to describe how their lives changed in a major way, about half of adults said they felt more afraid, more careful, more distrustful or more vulnerable as a result of the attacks.

This sentiment was shared by residents of other large cities. A quarter of people who lived in large cities nationwide said their lives had changed in a major way — twice the rate found in small towns and rural areas. The impacts of the Sept. By the following August, half of U. The study noted that while partisans agreed on little else that election cycle, more than seven-in-ten Republicans and Democrats named the attacks as one of their top 10 historic events.

It is difficult to think of an event that so profoundly transformed U. While Americans had a shared sense of anguish after Sept. After the U. George W. Bush, who had become president nine months earlier after a fiercely contested election, saw his job approval rise 35 percentage points in the space of three weeks. Americans also turned to religion and faith in large numbers.

Public esteem rose even for some institutions that usually are not that popular with Americans. For example, in November , news organizations received record-high ratings for professionalism. Public trust in government, as well as confidence in other institutions, declined throughout the s. With the U. Many Americans were impatient for the Bush administration to give the go-ahead for military action.

Even in the early stages of the U.