How Did 9/11 Change Our Lives?

The sheer scale of the destruction and the rage that fueled it changed us forever. The hate was real. The image of the second plane hitting the South Tower of the World Trade Center, divided our lives into a before and an after. We remember where we were when we heard, and even more clearly where we were when we first saw that second plane flying into that building. Only 2 percent of Americans say they don't remember where they were when they first heard about 9/11.

We had not paid that much attention to the bombings of the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in 1998, which killed 230 and injured more than 4,000. An intense presidential campaign may have distracted us from the meaning of the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in Oct. 2000, which killed 17 American sailors. But After Sept. 11, we had a mass grave in Lower Manhattan and the Pentagon resembled a wounded, pre-historic beast. Thousands were dead and we were at full attention.

"At 8:46 on the morning of September 11, 2001, the United States became a nation transformed," begins the report issued by the 9/11 Commission in Aug. 2004. It continued: "An airliner traveling at hundreds of miles per hour and carrying some 10,000 gallons of jet fuel plowed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. At 9:03, a second airliner hit the South Tower. Fire and smoke billowed upward. Steel, glass, ash, and bodies fell below. The Twin Towers, where up to 50,000 people worked each day, both collapsed less than 90 minutes later."

That night the president went on television: "The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing, have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger," he said. "These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed; our country is strong. " We knew it would be different, and, briefly we came together. President Bush's approval rating, which hovered around 50 percent for the first few months of his presidency, soared to 88 percent in October, after American forces launched Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. And it was not just him: His Secretary of State, Colin Powell had an 88 percent approval rating; his Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was at 78 percent and his Vice President Dick Cheney was at 69 percent.

"You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror," the President famously said. We were with him. We took off our shoes to take a commercial flight. An anthrax scare made us handle our mail with latex gloves; we watched people more carefully on the subway and at the mall. Employers issued gas masks to employees.

A full two-thirds, 66 percent, of Americans say 9/11 has changed their lives personally, at least some. According to a recent CNN poll, 27 percent say it has changed their lives a great deal. And when it comes to how much it has changed America, 91 percent say it has changed it some and 53 percent say it has changed a great deal.

The events of that day has so colored the way we see the world, that firefighters, who became a symbol of heroism and defiance as they rushed into collapsing buildings when others were trying to get out, are now the profession held in the highest regard among Americans, surpassing doctors. In 2001, firefighters were no even one the board in terms of a prestige profession.

A year later though, the global terror debate and our response to 9/11 had become a debate about an invasion of Iraq, and it divided the country then as it does now. The President was persuaded and persuaded many that Iraq was the source of our 9/11 problems: Evidence since then has shown that not to be the case, but 70 percent of Americans believed that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 plot and that he had, or would have, "weapons of mass destruction," which posed a danger to us.

In March 2003 the U.S. invaded Iraq, Hussein was toppled and after six weeks of fighting, Bush flew a fighter jet, a Navy S-B3 Viking, onto the USS Abraham Lincoln 30 miles off the California coast and declared the mission "accomplished." He was re-elected in 2004, largely on the strength of the argument that he was the one best suited to prosecute a "war on terror." And while people have grown more critical of the war in Iraq, the President still gets his highest approval marks, 55 percent, for his handling of the war on terror. And a three-quarters of American say they feels as safe as they did before 9/11; 43 percent say safer.

Still, more than 2500 American servicemen have died in Iraq since the President's "mission accomplished" declaration. And as casualties have mounted and progress has grown more elusive, the war in Iraq would change Americans again. No nuclear or chemical weapons were found. Today as he continues to shore up support for the war, Bush, with a 34 percent job approval rating, faces a skeptical public: A majority, 53 percent, does not believe that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11 or al-Qaeda, and they don't think that the war on terror is winnable.

With the number of Americans dead in Iraq approaching the number killed in the 9/11 attacks, Bush's tough sell only promises to get tougher. According to a recent Harris Poll, only 48 percent of Americans believe that the President tells the truth, down from 65 percent in 2002.

But while Iraq has dominated the debate, the 9/11 commissioners in their report sought to remind American what was at stake: "We call on the American people to remember how we all felt on 9/11, to remember not only the unspeakable horror but how we came together as a nation-one nation." they wrote. "Unity of purpose and unity of effort are the way we will defeat this enemy and make America safer for our children and grandchildren."

Future generations who will inherit an America, a world, changed by the events of that fateful second Tuesday in September, in 2001.

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