The Long Shadow of September 11

The twin Tribute in Light beams rising over the lower Manhattan skyline at night, seen across the East River

As we commemorate the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001, we pause to remember the nearly 3,000 innocent people murdered in a single morning. They were mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, friends, colleagues, travelers, firefighters, police officers, paramedics, office workers, military personnel, and ordinary citizens beginning what they believed would be an ordinary day.

They boarded planes. They entered elevators. They poured coffee. They said goodbye to loved ones, never imagining that the morning would become a defining national trauma. In New York, Washington, and a field in Pennsylvania, the illusion of safety was shattered. The names of the 2,977 people killed in the attacks remain etched into the conscience of the nation, as well as into the memorials built to ensure that they are never reduced to a number.

We remember the passengers who resisted their hijackers aboard United Flight 93. We remember the first responders who entered the World Trade Center when everyone else was trying to escape. We remember the men and women who climbed stairwells through smoke and fire, knowing that they might not return. We remember those who called home from offices above the impact zone, those who prayed, those who helped strangers, and those who died in acts of courage that still humble us a quarter-century later.

For many Americans, the story of 9/11 remains frozen in images of burning towers, falling debris, dust-covered survivors, and a skyline forever changed. Yet the story did not end when the smoke cleared. It did not end when the debris pile was removed, when the names were read, or when the country went back to work.

For thousands of Americans, 9/11 has continued in hospitals, doctors’ offices, chemotherapy units, funeral homes, and family dining rooms. The toxic dust and debris released by the destruction of the World Trade Center became a second, slower assault on the people who worked, lived, attended school, or participated in rescue and recovery efforts near Ground Zero. Its damage was not always immediate. It emerged over time, often after years in which people believed they had escaped the physical consequences of that terrible day.

Today, the World Trade Center Health Program serves more than 145,000 responders and survivors. More than 57,000 program members have received certification for a cancer linked to their 9/11 exposure, including many diagnosed only years after the attacks. Cancer is now one of the most significant and persistent components of the post-9/11 health crisis.

This continuing tragedy is a painful reminder that warfare does not always end when the battlefield becomes quiet. Some injuries are visible at once. Others take root silently and reveal themselves only years later. The long progression of 9/11-related cancers should remind us that the consequences of an ideological attack can extend far beyond the moment of violence.

The lesson is not simply that America must remember a past atrocity. It is that the ideology behind that atrocity remains active, adaptive, and dangerous. Militant Islamism no longer depends solely on spectacular, centrally directed attacks. It operates through terrorist organizations abroad, online propaganda, self-radicalized individuals, religious intimidation, antisemitic incitement, and efforts to erode confidence in the liberal values that its adherents reject.

The terrorists who carried out the September 11 attacks were not motivated by a misunderstanding, a trade dispute, or a grievance that could have been resolved through good-faith negotiation. They were animated by radical Islamism, an ideology that treats the democratic West, religious freedom, free expression, pluralism, and equality under the law as enemies to be defeated.

It is essential to speak carefully. Islam is a global faith practiced by millions of peaceful Americans and billions of people around the world. Muslim Americans serve in the armed forces, work in hospitals and schools, own businesses, participate in public life, and contribute meaningfully to the United States. They should never be blamed for the crimes committed by terrorists or extremists who claim religious justification for violence.

But clarity is not bigotry. Radical Islamism is not simply private religious belief. It is a political ideology that seeks religious supremacy over civic law, suppresses dissent, rejects equal treatment for women and religious minorities, and too often excuses or celebrates violence against those who disagree. It is an ideology that must be confronted, not ignored or softened by euphemism.

The threat is neither hypothetical nor confined to history. Across Europe, jihadist terrorism remains a major security concern. Europol reported that jihadist activity accounted for the largest share of terrorist attacks and terrorism-related arrests in the European Union in 2025. Many contemporary plots involve lone actors, often young people radicalized online, who require less direction, fewer resources, and less time to prepare an act of violence. That makes the threat harder to detect and easier to underestimate.

The United Kingdom has confronted the same reality. British authorities have identified Islamist terrorism as the country’s leading domestic terrorist threat, and it represents the majority of the Security Service’s counterterrorism caseload. London’s painful experience, from the July 7 bombings in 2005 to later attacks at Westminster Bridge and London Bridge, should remind us that a free society cannot afford to treat ideological extremism as merely another cultural preference.

Brussels offers a similarly sobering lesson. The 2016 bombings at Brussels Airport and the Maelbeek metro station showed that terrorist networks can grow where authorities fail to identify radicalization, isolate extremists, and insist upon a common civic loyalty. The issue is not ethnicity. It is ideology, organization, recruitment, and the willingness of a society to recognize when groups or individuals reject its constitutional order.

This is why the distinction between a peaceful religious faith and militant political Islam is so important. Islam is practiced peacefully by millions of Americans. Radical Islamism, however, is a supremacist political project. It rejects the legitimacy of democratic law when that law conflicts with its own religious vision. It targets religious minorities, threatens dissidents, glorifies violence, demonizes Jews, and seeks to make ordinary citizens afraid to speak honestly about the challenge it presents.

A society that no longer believes in its own civic culture cannot credibly ask newcomers to adopt it. A country reluctant to defend free speech, religious liberty, women’s equality, or the rule of law will find it difficult to distinguish genuine tolerance from surrender. The question is not whether people may bring their faith, traditions, and family heritage to America. Of course they may. The question is whether every citizen accepts that constitutional law, individual liberty, and equal protection are superior to any political or religious doctrine that seeks to override them.

Immigration policy belongs within that discussion, but it is not the whole discussion. America should welcome those who seek freedom and opportunity while maintaining lawful borders, meaningful screening, and a serious expectation of assimilation. The country must be able to identify individuals connected to terrorist organizations, violent extremist networks, or foreign ideologies that reject the Constitution. But a sound national-security policy must also confront radicalization among those already inside the country, whether it begins in an overseas network, on a phone screen, in a prison, or within a local circle that discourages dissent and elevates sectarian loyalty above American citizenship.

Dearborn, Michigan, requires careful language because it is home to a large and varied Arab American and Muslim American population that includes patriotic citizens, veterans, entrepreneurs, professionals, public servants, and families. No entire community should be stereotyped. But no community should be beyond honest scrutiny either. Americans must be free to ask whether antisemitism is being tolerated, whether Islamist political movements are gaining influence, whether women and dissidents feel safe speaking openly, and whether civic leaders are willing to condemn extremism without qualification.

Hamtramck illustrates a related problem. For years, it was celebrated as a model of diversity, immigration, and minority political representation. Yet the 2023 city policy barring Pride flags and other identity-group flags from municipal property exposed the limits of diversity when it is not joined to a shared commitment to liberty. The policy did not prohibit residents or businesses from displaying Pride flags, but it signaled to many LGBTQ+ residents that their public recognition could be withdrawn by a changing political majority. That is not an argument against any faith or community. It is an argument for a civic standard that protects every individual from the coercive preferences of a local majority.

Diversity is not an end in itself. The American promise is not merely that different groups may live beside one another. It is that every individual may live under the same constitutional protections, speak freely, worship freely, dissent freely, and remain equal before the law. Where those principles weaken, the most organized and ideologically confident factions will fill the vacuum.

The answer is not ethnic nationalism and it is not collective suspicion. It is civic confidence and undivided allegiance to the constitutional order.

Theodore Roosevelt warned that “there is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.” Yet his larger point is often omitted. He immediately made clear that he was not condemning naturalized citizens, noting that some of the finest Americans he had known were born abroad. “Americanism,” he said, “is a matter of the spirit and of the soul.” The test was not birthplace, ethnicity, or religion, but whether one’s allegiance was “purely to the United States.”

This remains a sound standard. Americans may honor their ancestry, cherish family traditions, practice their faith, and preserve the cultural heritage that enriches our country. But none of those attachments can supersede allegiance to the Constitution, the rule of law, and the liberties that make America a common home for people of every background.

September 11 was an attack not simply on buildings or individuals, but on an idea. The attackers targeted American power, economic strength, military readiness, religious freedom, and the open society itself. They sought to frighten the West into retreat, division, and self-doubt.

We honor those who died by refusing to forget what was attacked, who attacked it, and why. We honor the first responders and survivors still suffering from cancers and chronic illnesses by recognizing that some national wounds remain open long after the cameras move on.

America must remain compassionate without becoming naive. It must be open without becoming defenseless. It must be tolerant without becoming indifferent to intolerance. It must welcome those who seek freedom while insisting that freedom cannot survive if a society loses the courage to defend it.

That is the obligation we owe to those murdered on September 11, to the families still grieving, to the first responders whose battle continues, and to the next generation that deserves to inherit a free, confident, and united America.

Eli M. Gold is the President of the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington, DC-based think-and-do tank focusing on foreign policy and defense matters. To learn more about the Gold Institute, visit www.Goldiis.org.

Always Blame America

Golden Dome missile defense concept illustration

(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in RealClearDefense. Always Blame America)

In “The Powder Keg in Outer Space” Jeffrey Lewis warns the United States, Russia, and China may not yet be in an arms race, but they are gearing up for one. He worries that “Washington is building a new intercontinental ballistic missile, strategic bomber, and ballistic missile submarine.” And Russia is developing a “heavy ICBM and a new warhead while planning upgrades to its submarines and bombers.” Even worse, he notes “China has dug more than 300 new missile silos and fielded air-launched ballistic missiles, and it is developing a new generation of submarines and a stealth bomber.” He concludes all three countries are making decisions about modernizing their nuclear weapons programs “that will bear fruit in the decades to come—a worrisome but notable reversal after decades in which the United States and Russia dismantled thousands of nuclear weapons and China seemed content maintaining a minimal deterrent.”

What happened? Lewis thinks the U.S. ruined any chance for arms control by getting out of the ABM Treaty in 2002. It was only then that Russia and China decided to go forward with their own aggressive nuclear modernization plans.

What’s wrong with this grievance theory of nuclear arms racing?

First, while the U.S. did jettison the ABM Treaty in 2002, over the next decade the U.S. and Russia agreed to two strategic arms deals with Russia—the Moscow Treaty and New START which cut nuclear warheads from 6000 to roughly 2000, a big 67% reduction. Second, the U.S. decided in 2010, some 16 years ago, in a bi-partisan agreement between the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress, to proceed with the nuclear modernization effort we are now undertaking. Third, the U.S. is not engaging in any arms race or contemplating entering such a race as the modernization effort only replaces our legacy nuclear systems that are between 42-70 years old. And that replacement would leave the U.S. with a nuclear deterrent force at exactly the level agreed to under the New START agreement of 2010. Fourth, the decisions have been made to undertake this modernization effort as the only alternative would have been to gradually disarm through ongoing obsolescence. And fifth, the current U.S. policy is hardly a reversal of 2010’s decision. It is in fact a continuation of the 2010 non-partisan agreement to bolster our nuclear deterrent for what now appears to be an even more difficult and tough future nuclear environment.

While it is true the U.S. might add to its nuclear force, in the real world the U.S. is doing what it must to deter. And that includes missile defense. The current arsenal may be augmented through the deployment of theater or regional nuclear forces such as a new land launched or sub launched cruise missile, but both were not ever banned by any arms deal. And whatever limited number of additional strategic and extended deterrent weapons the U.S. does deploy, it is not in search of any objective requiring some kind of “arms race.” The U.S. already faces a very lopsided regional or theater nuclear balance that is getting worse. The 2023 Strategic Posture Commission recognized this, for example, and unanimously agreed that it needs to be remedied quickly. That is not the U.S. racing but trying to right an imbalance.

Lewis provides no current alternative to the U.S. replacing its aging and legacy force but nonetheless he has to make it appear as the U.S. is doing bad things. The U.S. has to be at fault as Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick famously said, “They always have to blame America.” Lewis cleverly resurrects an old bete noire from the height of the Cold War. U.S. missile defenses are bad, bad, bad. The U.S. left the ABM Treaty and built a missile defense. Bad, bad, bad. This narrative allows Lewis to excuse the Russian and Chinese nuclear buildup, although he concedes the 2002-3 U.S. missile defense build was minimal compared to what Russia and China feared the U.S. would do. So, an arms race engendered by missile defense or SDI or Golden Dome is front and center in Lewis’s fevered imagination.

And oh, what fairy tales he feeds us.

First, Lewis embraces the ABM Treaty of 1972 for its supposed arms control benefits. But the companion 1972 SALT deal didn’t result in lower levels of nuclear weapons but actually a 6-fold increase in deployed Soviet strategic weapons by the mid-1980s. Second, according to a recently declassified portion of a 1983 net assessment by OSD, the Soviets could have increased their strategic arsenal to 24,000 warheads under the terms of the SALT II agreement (withdrawn by President Carter in 1979 as its supporters determined there were less than 30 votes for its ratification.) Third, Reagan’s modernization of our own nuclear deterrent and pursuit of missile defense research and development, while also taking down and bankrupting the USSR empire, were the secret to securing under START I major nuclear warhead reductions, not the nuclear freeze favored by Reagan’s opponents.

For example, Mr. Robert McFarlane, President Reagan’s national security adviser, told me that with the support of the entirety of the military joint chiefs, it was the Strategic Defense Initiative or missile defense initiative of March 1983, along with the deployment of U.S. Pershing and Ground Launched Cruise missiles, that was a significant factor in bringing the Soviets to the arms control table. McFarlane related how in late 1983 he hosted a group of Senators who asked how long they had to vote to fund Reagan’s missile defense before an arms control deal with the USSR would be completed. McFarlane told them an INF type treaty would be done in four years—which was exactly what happened when INF was signed in December 1987.

Lewis finds credible the strange Russian and Chinese narrative or paradigm that sees American missile defense as a shield behind which the U.S. can strike first to try and disarm an adversary. Thus, China and Russia are building up their nukes.

However, in the real world, the U.S. limited defense now deployed against strategic long range missiles was primarily to defend the U.S. from North Korean and potentially Iranian threats. Mr. Lewis seems to take the position of the Russian Duma. In 1999 Moscow’s Duma would support the START II treaty but only if the U.S. kept all missile defense work in the laboratory. Even as the Russians armed the North Koreans and Iranians with the very weapons technology that made U.S. missile defenses necessary!

Missile defense isn’t and won’t ever be perfect. It does not have to be. It significantly complicates any attackers plans and thus enhances deterrence. The past decade has seen the launch of thousands of Iranian and terrorist ballistic missiles, drones, and rockets at U.S. interests in the Middle East, especially at Israel. These launches were terror attacks, pure and simple. According to Dr. Uzi Rubin, the premier missile defense expert in the world, Israel shot down 99% of the Iranian ballistic missiles while overall all allied nations shot down between 84-99% of all engaged missile, drone, and rocket launches.

There is no diplomatic virtue in being 100% vulnerable to missile threats. Would Lewis rather trade protection for vulnerability if the rockets were being launched from Canada or Mexico into the United States?

Golden Dome is necessary for our protection and to frustrate the aggressive designs of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. These “brothers mayhem” have such weapons with which to make or threaten war on their enemies. The U.S. and its allies have such weapons including defenses to deter and prevent just such wars.

It’s called “peace through strength.”

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C. based foreign policy and defense think tank.