America remembers: twenty-five years after 9/11

{"text":[[{"start":6.76,"text":"Anyone old enough will remember exactly where they were on September 11 2001. Video footage of two airliners smashing into New York’s World Trade Center is seared into the memories of millions around the world."}],[{"start":19.06,"text":"The attacks that day united a nation in grief, patriotism and defiance and prompted an outpouring of global solidarity. A quarter of a century on, that sense of unity has proven increasingly elusive, as Americans’ divisions deepen and their politics grow ever more febrile."}],[{"start":35.54,"text":"But the shock and sadness of 9/11 linger in the collective memory, and on Friday the country tried — for a day at least — to rekindle the common purpose and sense of a shared experience as it marks the 25th anniversary of the tragedy."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":49.32,"text":"When al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four passenger planes and crashed them into buildings in New York City and Washington and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people, the nation came together and showed what it is “truly made of”, President Donald Trump said in a speech at the Pentagon on Friday."}],[{"start":65.78,"text":"“In those harrowing days after the attacks, we saw the authentic spirit of our nation,” he said. “We were all New Yorkers that day. Every one of us. We were all New Yorkers. We were all family.”"}],[{"start":77,"text":"Images from that fateful day — the shell-shocked office workers, covered with ash, the enormous dust cloud moving through Lower Manhattan and firefighters clambering through smouldering rubble — have flooded US news sites in the run-up to the commemoration."}],[{"start":90.4,"text":"Haunting recordings of messages left by passengers aboard the hijacked planes and desperate people trapped in the World Trade Center towers have circulated on social media alongside interviews with relatives of the victims still struggling with their own private grief."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":105,"text":"As part of the main ceremony of remembrance in New York City on Friday, family members gathered at the twin reflecting pools that mark the footprints of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers to read the names of those killed in the attacks."}],[{"start":117.12,"text":"All of the living US presidents except Trump — Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton — attended the event."}],[{"start":117.62,"text":"Trump stayed in Washington, where, together with defence secretary Pete Hegseth, he honoured the 184 people killed at the Pentagon and aboard Flight 77."}],[{"start":133.56,"text":"And in Pennsylvania, the bells of remembrance sounded to recall Flight 93, which crashed in a field near the town of Shanksville, killing all 40 passengers and crew after they attempted to overpower the hijackers."}],[{"start":147.36,"text":"In New York, six moments of silence were observed on Friday morning marking the times when each of the towers was struck, when each fell, when the Pentagon was attacked and when Flight 93 crashed. For the first time a seventh was also observed to honour those who died years later from illnesses and injuries linked to the aftermath of the attacks."}],[{"start":168.96,"text":"Behind the national mourning, debate still rages over the political meaning of the 9/11 attack, an inflection point in US history as consequential as the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":180.96,"text":"The assault changed the course of US foreign and domestic policy. And it set off a sequence of historic events that reshaped the Middle East and south Asia."}],[{"start":190.4,"text":"Nato invoked its collective defence clause for the first and only time in its history, and the US invaded Afghanistan to eliminate al-Qaeda and sweep aside the Taliban government that sheltered it. Less than two years later, Bush sent troops into Iraq in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction."}],[{"start":207.44,"text":"A traumatised American public initially rallied behind the wars, as patriotic sentiment surged. In polls from October 2001, 60 per cent of adults expressed trust in the federal government. A quarter of a century later, this has dropped to just 17 per cent."}],[{"start":225.228,"text":"The US failure to find WMD in Iraq undermined faith in the Bush administration’s competence and truthfulness. That accelerated as the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan became bloody and civilian and military casualties mounted."}],[{"start":238.8,"text":"Iraq and Afghanistan turned out to be “the two longest wars in American history, where I suspect the standard for victory — for never could we win conventionally — was: when would we leave and what would we leave behind?” said Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace."}],[{"start":254.48,"text":"The Costs of War project at Brown University has estimated that 432,000 civilians were killed by direct post-9/11 war violence from 2001 to 2023. More than 7,000 US servicemen and women died."}],[{"start":268.92,"text":"Revelations about the inner workings of the war on terror — such as “enhanced interrogation” practices, including waterboarding and sleep deprivation, and secret overseas prisons — badly damaged America’s standing with its allies. Later, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban’s triumphant return to power only deepened the American public’s disillusionment with nation-building and “forever wars”."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":293.72,"text":"The creation of a powerful security apparatus has also complicated the attack’s legacy."}],[{"start":298.84,"text":"“There was embedded in that apparatus the capacity for excess,” said Nick Rasmussen, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. “And it created the conditions through which we could, over time and at moments, stray from our values and our principles.”"}],[{"start":314.96,"text":"This lingering sense of threat has overshadowed the anniversary commemoration. A small group of 9/11 family members has petitioned for New York’s first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani, to stay away from the event at Ground Zero, although he has said he will attend to honour the victims."}],[{"start":331.952,"text":"The US engagements in the Middle East and other foreign wars have diminished — but not entirely. Trump’s conflict in Iran, more than two decades after the invasion of Iraq, has evoked more anxiety about America and its overseas entanglements. As the president sends more Americans to fight in the Middle East, his US feels less united than the country that experienced the devastation of 9/11."}],[{"start":353.32,"text":"But the anniversary remains an occasion for collective remembrance as well as education for those too young to have their own memories of that fateful day."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":361.84,"text":"In the run-up to the day, events had been held across the country. On Wednesday evening a public art installation using 2,977 synchronised drones recreated the silhouette of the Twin Towers in the skies over New York City."}],[{"start":375.82,"text":"And for months, a charity, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, has transported a 21-foot steel beam retrieved from the ruins of the World Trade Center up and down the US to show young Americans an object from the attacks."}],[{"start":388.54,"text":"Nine-year-old Loren Consentino went to see the beam when it stopped in Land O’ Lakes, Florida, in May. Touching it, she told local television it belonged to a history she had not experienced herself."}],[{"start":400.181,"text":"“It . . . was nice to feel it,” she said. “Because I wasn’t born yet.”"}],[{"start":405.16,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1789171011_5541.mp3"}