Surveillance, wars and Islamophobia named as lasting impacts
The Guardian asked American readers how the September 11, 2001 attacks affected their day-to-day lives and the country at large as the United States commemorates the attacks’ 25th anniversary. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people in New York City, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania.
Many readers recalled patriotism in the days following the attacks while highlighting how the government’s response expanded surveillance and fueled Islamophobia, the Guardian reported. The Guardian characterized the attacks as a “cataclysmic shift” for respondents who were adults at the time and as context for the “complicated and violent world” in which younger respondents grew up.
Readers identified the Patriot Act and the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, both passed in response to the attacks, as tangible examples of the day’s legacy in daily life. Benjamin Price, a 50-year-old attorney in Savannah, Georgia, wrote that security restrictions once considered unacceptable had become routine. “Measures we never would have accepted in the 90s, searches at airports, no bags in stadiums, seemed ‘reasonable’ and never went away,” he said.
Price also criticized the wars that followed. “We launched two forever wars that were wholly ineffective at making us safer militarily, and only sank our prestige in the world – especially [in] Europe and the Middle East – at the cost of thousands of American soldiers and countless Iraqi civilians,” he wrote.
Price contrasted the response to potential foreign terrorism with the response to domestic gun violence. “While we would take seemingly any measure to fend off potential foreign terrorism, domestic terrorism in our own country seemed to become a monthly occurrence with absolutely no measures to widen or strengthen domestic gun laws,” he wrote.
Elizabeth Zorko, a retired election administrator in Omaha, Nebraska, said she has not flown since April 2002. “Not because I’m afraid, but because it’s such a hassle,” she said.
Mona, a 72-year-old in California, attributed broader consequences to the Patriot Act. She said she believes “the Patriot Act laid the groundwork for the excesses of the DHS [Department of Homeland Security], ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], and CBP [Customs and Border Protection] that have killed many since 2025. It also provided ignorant and racist white Americans with cover to act on their prejudices.”
Readers also recalled a surge of patriotism and solidarity immediately after the attacks. Jennifer Jasensky, a 55-year-old paralegal based in Milford, Connecticut, wrote: “When 9/11 first happened, everyone became your friend. We were all together in this loss, and the country felt like home everywhere. Driving down a suburban street every house displayed an American flag.”
“It was a beautiful sight, like something out of a book or Hallmark movie,” Jasensky added.
Zorko described a similar experience. “I remember meeting the eyes of total strangers and there was a look that wasn’t there before, as if a deep personal connection had been forged by this shared horrific experience,” she wrote.
The Guardian reported that the feeling of unity soon gave way to anger and division, in large part because of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The George W Bush administration began the wars and framed them as necessary conflicts to help the United States win the war on terror.
Other readers focused on Islamophobia after the attacks. Dan J, a 42-year-old based in Vermont, said: “From day one, the attacks on 9/11 have been used to demonize and dehumanize an entire region of the world.”
“We allowed 9/11 to bring our nation together, not in grieving or resilience, but in group hatred,” Dan J added. “I was ashamed of us then, and as we have allowed this country to become more absorbed in hatred, xenophobia and isolation now, the shame is stronger.”
A Guardian reader who asked to remain anonymous described the Islamophobia he faced as a devout Muslim growing up in a post-9/11 world. “The most it impacted me was during elementary through high school,” he said. “I grew up in the Bay Area where people are generally more tolerant and educated, so the worst experiences I have are mostly with regards to jokes and being poked fun at by classmates in school.”
Beyond the classroom, the anonymous reader said, “the Middle East became associated exclusively with danger and terrorism, despite being the birthplace of all Abrahamic religions and a hotbed of ancient civilizations.”
Jeff Jarvis, a 72-year-old journalist and former Guardian contributor, arrived at the World Trade Center from the train as the first plane hit. “I stayed to report and was a block from the South Tower when it fell, enveloping me in the dust of destruction,” he wrote.
“In the 25 years since, many, including me, have ongoing health issues,” Jarvis added. “I don’t know to this day what the effect is on children, including mine.”
Jarvis also recalled George W Bush standing atop the rubble and visiting a mosque. “Regardless of stirring memories of George W Bush standing atop the pile of rubble and visiting a mosque in a show of unity and compassion, now it is all the easier for rightwing fanatics in power to stir hatred, attack neighbors and start wars based on otherness,” he wrote. “That one day of terrible suffering and loss took from us Americans our perspective for the suffering and loss we now bring down on other nations and peoples.”
Ashley, a 30-year-old based in Washington, DC, celebrated her fifth birthday on September 11, 2001. “People who are older than me say ‘it united the whole country’,” she said. “But growing up alongside its passing anniversary, I feel it completely unraveled the US, and we are still wrestling with its legacy.”
“To me, 9/11 has become representative of in America, paranoia, death, destruction, revenge, greed,” Ashley added. “Even our younger generations laugh at it, because they are desensitized not just to the violence of that day, but the overwhelming violence America committed abroad in its wake.”
The Guardian’s presentation included a photograph by Darren McCollester of the “wall of prayers” at Bellevue Hospital in New York City on September 14, 2001. It also included a photograph by Evan Agostini of a candlelight vigil in Union Square in New York City on the same date.