September 11 and the End of the World I Thought I Knew (9/11/26)

On September 11, 2001, I was 21 years old and working at the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, where crews had spent the previous day loading in the band 311 for a multi-day event. After working a 16-hour shift, I was asleep when my mother woke me to say that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. At first, I assumed it was a small aircraft and a tragic accident. That changed when I went downstairs and watched the second plane strike the other tower. Standing in my parents’ living room, I looked at them and said, “We are under attack.” The fear quickly became personal because I had family working on Wall Street and elsewhere in New York, while nobody yet knew the full scope of the attacks or whether more were coming. For many Americans, including me, the attacks shattered a long-held sense that the United States was largely insulated from the kind of terrorism and political violence that had been associated with conflicts overseas.The attacks also changed the direction of my life. Before September 11, I was studying entertainment law and planned to pursue a career as a sports agent, but afterward I became focused on understanding the forces behind the attacks and the ideology of groups such as al-Qaeda. I changed my major to political science with an emphasis on the Near East and began studying the history of the region, the relationship between the Muslim world and the West, and the development of modern jihadist movements. That study also made clear that September 11 did not emerge without warning, following earlier attacks that included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa, and the attack on the USS Cole. The attacks marked the end of a period of personal and national innocence, replacing assumptions of security with a recognition that ideological violence could reach directly into American life. Twenty-five years later, the memory remains vivid, not only because of what happened that morning, but because of how completely it altered the way I understood the world and the path I chose to follow.to contact me:[email protected]