For a quarter-century, each September 11 has arrived with the familiar injunction to “never forget.” Yet for those of us who lived through that day, forgetting was never the risk. The shock, the fear, the second plane hitting the World Trade Center, the towers collapsing—these images are seared into memory. So too are the missing-person posters that papered New York, and the quiet bravery of firefighters and police who climbed toward danger.
My college students, however, have no such memories. Most were born after 2001. They encounter 9/11 through photographs, documentaries, memorials, and the stories of those who were there. The National September 11 Memorial & Museum estimates that about 100 million Americans have been born since the attacks. The shift is ordinary, yet still startling: an event that once seemed to split time into a permanent before and after is now receding into history.
Memory is not preservation
Scholars of collective memory argue that societies do not simply preserve the past; they actively construct it. Public memory is made and remade through stories, institutions, and rituals. The Department of Homeland Security, created in response to 9/11, is one such institutional memory—a structural reform meant to fix the intelligence failures the attacks exposed.
Forgetting is part of this process. As memory scholar Paul Connerton noted, some forgetting is not failure but a necessary feature of social life. No individual, school, or nation can keep everything equally present. The question is not whether Americans will forget parts of 9/11—they will—but what remains after that forgetting.
Commemoration has always been carefully choreographed: the reading of names, the memorial lights, the stories of first responders. A 2016 Pew survey found that 76% of Americans named 9/11 among the ten most consequential events of their lifetimes, and nearly one in five said the nation’s immediate response was their proudest moment as Americans.
I understand that pride. Some of what I most want preserved is the shared grief of those first days, the ordinary humanity under unimaginable circumstances. Office workers helped colleagues and strangers. Families searched long after hope had thinned. Passengers on United Flight 93 fought back, forcing their plane down in a Pennsylvania field to save others.
Before 9/11 became a justification, a policy, a war, or a political symbol, it was an experience of shared human vulnerability.
Politics and its consequences
No event remains sealed in its original meaning. The attacks led to the war in Afghanistan, which lasted 20 years after the initial success in dismantling al-Qaida and removing the Taliban. Next came the invasion of Iraq, despite Saddam Hussein having no role in 9/11. The aftermath also fostered an atmosphere that expanded government surveillance, enlarged presidential power, and narrowed dissent. Muslim Americans faced new suspicion and hostility.
These consequences now compete with the original experience for a place in the day’s meaning. For some, 9/11 is inseparable from the wars and the erosion of civil liberties—a warning about how fear and grief can make unthinkable policies seem necessary. For others, the day and its aftermath represent restored American pride and military perseverance. For still others, it remains a story of innocent lives lost and extraordinary courage.
Each way of remembering draws a boundary around the terrorism the nation experienced, deciding how far beyond that September morning its meaning should extend. Even world-defining events eventually share the historical landscape with everything that follows. Since 2001, Americans have experienced other traumas and transformations—economic crises, political polarization, a pandemic, and shifting global dynamics. The long wars that followed 9/11 have reshaped not only the Middle East but also America’s role in the Indo-Pacific, where the focus has gradually shifted from counterterrorism to great-power competition.
For the region, the legacy of 9/11 is complex. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq drew American attention and resources away from Asia, allowing China to rise economically and militarily. Today, as Washington rebalances toward the Indo-Pacific, the memory of 9/11 serves as a cautionary tale about the costs of overreach. Meanwhile, South Korea’s evolving view of its alliance with the United States reflects a broader regional reassessment of American commitments.
As the 25th anniversary approaches, the question is not whether to forget, but what to remember. The names of the dead, the courage of the first responders, the humanity of ordinary people—these deserve preservation. But so does the hard lesson that grief can be manipulated, that fear can justify excess, and that memory itself is a battleground. In an age of renewed great-power rivalry, the way we remember 9/11 will shape how we navigate the challenges ahead.
