Friday 11 / September / 2026
The United States of America marks the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Nearly 25 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, survivors are concerned that memories of the tragedy are fading.
Speaking to DW, Peter Hahn, Professor of History at the Ohio State University, explains the anniversary’s place in collective US memory, also looking back at key events that followed in the wake of the attacks.
"9/11," Hahn says, "and especially the decisions made following 9/11, namely the decisions to invade Iraq and to wage global war on terror, those might have accentuated or accelerated what would have been a normal slower American decline from that unique circumstance of the post-World War II / Cold War position it had gained."
Osama bin Laden and al-Baghdadi are dead, but jihadist networks now reach from Kabul to Lagos. One question remains: Is the world safer 25 years after 9/11 and the War on Terror across Afghanistan, Iraq and West Africa?
