September 11th was life-altering. It is a day felt around the world – the reason for the sole invocation of NATO Article 5 and the roots of the failed exit currently ongoing in Afghanistan. I was a junior in high school sitting in my US history class when another teacher walked in and told us that two planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers. We turned on the TV, watched the events unfolding, and read the headlines. I remember watching the towers collapse on the screen and seeing estimates for deaths as high as 6,500. We walked slowly, quietly from class to class that day with the news playing in every room. We saw the worst of humanity in that moment, and flashes of the best as first responders ran into those buildings to save as many as they could.

At 16 years old, I didn’t have any understanding of the international forces at work that day, but over the next eight years, I studied in detail the causes, the silos, the responses, and the impacts. The War on Terror, much like wars on other abstractions like drugs and poverty, expanded far beyond the scope of justice for the perpetrators. I studied Political Science and International Relations in college. I wrote a paper on Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan during 9/11. When I read his autobiography, it was fascinating to see history through a completely different lens – one in which Pakistan made the decisions about the 9/11 response and acted as a gatekeeper for the United States.

It was during this time that I decided I was going to go into counterterrorism and applied for the Security Studies Program at Georgetown. While working on my master’s degree, I learned much more of the backstory – how Pakistan had every reason to disbelieve any promise the US made because we had backed out of so many promises since that country’s inception, how political decisions before 9/11 emboldened Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to attack the US directly, and how hubris and turf wars inside the US government kept the right people from getting the necessary information. I decided that I wanted to be part of the solution.

I was privileged enough to be in school in 2008 during the Great Recession when millions were out of work, and then at the same time I was looking for a job, the FBI was on a hiring blitz to find thousands of Intelligence Analysts, the job I was both born and trained to do. I participated in what I lovingly call a “cattle call” interview and started my background checks. After waiting months for the results, I distinctly remember getting a call and they told me that I could start in two weeks on September 20th or in three weeks on September 27th or I could turn down the job. Nine years after 9/11, I was working my dream job with the intention of helping stop another attack on American soil.

While my life took unexpected turns after that, and I left the FBI after less than three years, the impacts of 9/11 continued to play out around the world, and the last few weeks have brought those impacts back to the forefront of everyone’s mind. Most of America knew that we were still fighting a war in Afghanistan, but few were thinking of it regularly. Especially after Covid started, it wasn’t a front page story – until we started to pull out. 

The heartrending images and stories that have flooded out of Central Asia in July and August have been a stark reminder that decisions have consequences decades down the road. The mass evacuations demonstrate how desperately some people want to get out of Afghanistan, but there are millions still there to continue living in a war zone. Today is a day for remembering the fallen, those who died on 9/11 and in the wars to follow, the families who have been torn apart and destroyed, the lives forever altered. It is a sobering moment of reflection on a day that changed history.

If you want to learn more about September 11th, there are three books I recommend: 

• How We Missed the Story by Roy Gutman – This book looks at the rise of the Taliban in the 20 years preceding 9/11.
• The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright – This is an examination of al Qaeda leading up to 9/11.
• The 9/11 Commission Report – While I wouldn’t recommend reading many government reports, this one is well-written in understandable English rather than legalese. At 428 pages, excluding appendices and endnotes, it is a detailed description of the events and the government responses both before and after 9/11.