Mistakes Were Made: 9/11 At 20

We should also acknowledge that a pervasive question after 9/11—“Why do they hate us?”—was the wrong question.

1. Look Back in Anger

America’s greatest existential threat wasn’t terrorism.

By Frank Rich

IF YOU WANT TO CONTEMPLATE the legacy of 9/11 20 years later, the logical place to begin might be the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. It bills itself as “the country’s principal institution concerned with exploring 9/11, documenting its impact, and examining its continuing significance.” And so it is, though not necessarily in the way its proponents had imagined.

Battered by covid, whose New York City body count is thus far well over ten times that at ground zero, the museum was staring down a $45 million deficit and laid off nearly 60 percent of its staff during its pandemic closure. Its aspirations for special 20th-anniversary events have been downsized or scuttled. The guest list for the annual memorial ceremony is again limited to families of the dead, spurning the firefighters, police, and medics whose lives were on the line that day. A planned traveling exhibition to revive 9/11 memories nationwide has been replaced by what the New York Times describes as “downloadable posters created in partnership with the American Library Association.”