Americans Reflect on Life 25 Years After 9/11

National Review treated 9/11 as a dividing line in American identity, publishing reflections from people who saw the towers fall and from younger Americans who learned of the attacks only years later because they were born into a post-9/11 world. The Federalist ran a first-person New York account: the author, staying in Greenwich Village that morning, saw the second plane hit on television, watched the towers burn from Seventh Avenue, and noted that almost no ambulances reached nearby St. Vincent’s Hospital because so few people escaped. That essay argues the late-1990s city of falling crime and post–Cold War optimism ended after 9/11 and later polarization, and it states that New York’s Muslim population has grown larger than its Italian or Irish populations. It reports that in January 2026 the city inaugurated Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old socialist, as its first Muslim mayor; that he repeatedly declined on the campaign trail to condemn the slogan “Globalize the intifada”; that he associated with figures who minimized the attacks; and that on Sept. 5, 2026, while signing a 25th-anniversary executive order, he handed the ceremonial pen to chief counsel Ramzi Kassem, described as a lawyer who once represented an al-Qaeda-linked defendant connected to the Pentagon attack. The piece says more than 100,000 people signed a petition to keep Mamdani out of official commemorations. A second Federalist article, featuring former Justice Department and Guantanamo prosecutor Michael Lebowitz, recounts that Saudi national Mohamed al-Qahtani — later identified as the intended 20th hijacker — was turned away at Orlando International Airport on Aug. 4, 2001, after a brief customs detention, without agents then linking him to facilitator Mustafa al-Hawsawi or mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed; Mohamed Atta was allegedly waiting at the airport. Lebowitz argues intelligence still falls through cracks, immigration enforcement has been inconsistent, and domestic political conflict leaves the country exposed. He described 9/11 defendant Walid bin Attash making a paper airplane in the Guantanamo courtroom and smiling at victims’ families.