Twenty-four years ago, on a cloudless Tuesday morning, Islamist terrorists flew two passenger planes into the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan. The day America came under attack was an inflection point in US history and American life would no longer be the same. Terrorists flew hijacked planes into each of the Twin Towers, a third was flown into the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed in the fields of Pennsylvania when the passengers aboard stood and fought. New York, the City that Never Sleeps, stood still for two weeks, and one can still feel the echoes of that day resonating through the streets of Manhattan.
In the decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, America was at the height of her power and liberal historians proclaimed that the “end of history” was nigh. Freedom and democracy were to be our future; war and conflict creatures of the past. All that optimism which accompanied America into the New Millenium shattered on September 11, 2001. When the Twin Towers fell, what broke was more than steel and glass. Something in our national consciousness cracked and we are still living with the consequences of that moment. In the coming years, America would send her sons to battle in Iraq, Afghanistan, and across the Global War on Terror. War was once again part of our world, and the end of history disappeared from the horizon.
With all New Yorkers, the New York Young Republican Club mourns the innocent men and women who were killed on that awful Tuesday morning. We mourn their family members, whose lives were shattered that day, we mourn the injured as well, and those still suffering from 9/11-related illnesses 24 years later. We honor the sacrifice of the 40 passengers and crew on Flight 93 who took the hijackers, along with their plane, down with them in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
May God bless them and may God bless the United States of America.