--- title: September 11th Attacks: Americans Tell Terrorists You Win description: Seven out of 10 Americans believe the trillions spent on counter-terror measures since the attacks on New York and Washington fifteen years ago have not made a dent. canonical: https://time.com/4485365/911-september-11-american-views-terrorism/ author: Karl Vick article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-09-09T20:41:41.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:55:11.078Z article:section: Ideas og:title: September 11th Attacks: Americans Tell Terrorists You Win og:description: Seven out of 10 Americans believe the trillions spent on counter-terror measures since the attacks on New York and Washington fifteen years ago have not made a dent. og:url: https://time.com/4485365/911-september-11-american-views-terrorism/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6d5cebfc7766c287/69889c24428a9e9117cd36fc/saudi_arabia_911_report.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: Sept 11 Attacks Secret Files og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: September 11th Attacks: Americans Tell Terrorists You Win twitter:description: Seven out of 10 Americans believe the trillions spent on counter-terror measures since the attacks on New York and Washington fifteen years ago have not made a dent. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6d5cebfc7766c287/69889c24428a9e9117cd36fc/saudi_arabia_911_report.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Americans Tell the Terrorists: You Win > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: Survivors of Terrorist Attacks on How They Moved Forward [Watch (HLS stream): Survivors of Terrorist Attacks on How They Moved Forward](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Z0gQrqpv.m3u8) (7:17)  _Published 2016-09-09. Four terrorist attack survivors recounted the horrors of such acts of violence in a series of emotional interviews. The survivors who spoke to TIME all agreed on the need to march on in the face of fear._  by [Karl Vick](https://time.com/author/karl-vick/)  ## Karl Vick Editor at Large Sep 9, 2016 8:41 PM UTC  The twin towers of the World Trade Center burn behind the Empire State Building in New York after terrorists crashed two planes into the towers causing both to collapse, Sept. 11, 2001. The twin towers of the World Trade Center burn behind the Empire State Building in New York after terrorists crashed two planes into the towers causing both to collapse, Sept. 11, 2001. Marty Lederhandler—AP  by [Karl Vick](https://time.com/author/karl-vick/)  ## Karl Vick Editor at Large Sep 9, 2016 8:41 PM UTC It used to be a joke: “But then the terrorists have won.” Attach the phrase to any sentence—”We could just stay home and watch it on cable, but then the terrorists have won”—and you had both a ready-made quip and a light reminder that life goes on, even after a great national trauma. But now the terrorists have won. We know this because Americans say so. In a [Pew poll ](http://www.people-press.org/2016/09/07/15-years-after-911-a-sharp-partisan-divide-on-ability-of-terrorists-to-strike-u-s/?utm%5Fsource=adaptivemailer&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=16-09-07%209/11&org=982&lvl=100&ite=254&lea=32754&ctr=0&par=1&trk=)released this week, 40 percent of people said terrorists have a greater capacity than before 9/11 to mount another major attack on the United States. That’s roughly twice as many people as thought so a year after 9/11\. It’s the worst assessment recorded in the last 15 years. Today, only 25 percent of Americans say terrorists are less capable of mounting a major attack. While 31 percent say they’re every bit as capable today as they were on 9/11. In other words, seven out of 10 Americans believe the trillions spent on counter-terror measures since the attacks on New York and Washington have not made a dent. It’s an extraordinary thought. In 2010 the Washington Post [took a stab at tallying the herculean effort to stop another 9/11](http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/). It put the number of government organizations working on homeland security at 1,271, plus another 1,931 private firms. Workers dedicated to the task toiled in some 10,000 locations across the country, including 33 building new government complexes built for top-secret intel work since 9/11—about 17 million square feet, the equivalent of three Pentagons. All for naught? Surely there’s a certain amount of waste and featherbedding in a security industry that [one study](http://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/84623-security-industry-market-worth-350-billion-study) estimated at $350 billion a year. But, to come at the matter another way, is it mere coincidence that 15 years have passed _without_ another major attack in the U.S.? Another major attack—a “spectacular”—is all al-Qaeda wanted to do, and it never came close. The group couldn’t even bring down an airliner, thanks partly, it’s true, to luck with shoe and underwear bombs, but the TSA screening obviously frustrated more than us innocent travelers. All of which seems to place the Pew finding in the realm not of facts, but of feelings. Some of these feelings turn out to be partisan: Pew found Republicans [much more agitated ](http://www.people-press.org/2016/09/07/15-years-after-911-a-sharp-partisan-divide-on-ability-of-terrorists-to-strike-u-s/1%5F1-5/)about terror than Democrats are, and also much more inclined to fault President Obama for that feeling (the same was true about Democrats under Bush). Terrorism has gone, in the last decade and a half, from something that united us to one more thing that divides us. It now takes in the divisive issues of refugees and Islamophobia, along with other, less easily named concerns that find expression in a generalized sense of rising dread. ISIS has done a superb job of exploiting that feeling—leveraging brutality to seize control of the news cycle for months at a time, making themselves appear huge. They are not, according to those who have seen them up close. “A few of them were smart, I have to admit,” Nicolas Henin, a French journalist who was held by ISIS for ten months in 2013-14, tells TIME. “But they were mostly like street kids. Just go to the corner in your town, and engage some of the youngsters who are sitting on the block. They are these people.” After the San Bernardino attack of last December, terrorism was briefly the [nation’s most pressing concern](http://www.gallup.com/poll/187655/americans-name-terrorism-no-problem.aspx), even though the 14 victims numbered fewer than the hijackers (19) killed on 9/11\. Since then, jobs and the economy have resumed the top spot. And yet talk of terrorism, linked with immigration and the more general rubric of national security, dominates the presidential campaign. It is, itself, unsettling when the prospect of an attack worries ordinary people far more than it does the officials in charge of preventing such things. “I don’t worry about it very much,” says Philip Mudd, who used to be the top FBI official for counter terrorism, speaking in an HBO documentary called [_Homegrown_](http://time.com/4183846/homegrown-hbo-documentary-isis/). He describes a soccer mom who insists to him that she and her family are going to come under attack. No, Mudd tells her, they’re not. But the look on his face makes clear that the woman went away unconvinced. Look at the polls. Can’t stop the feeling. ## Transcript [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ MUSIC ] You have to convey the truth, but there's always a viewpoint. So is the story you are telling, terror, terror, terror, it's awful, it's awful everybody's afraid, everybody run for your lives. Or is the message, how can we as a people come together to make our world safer? [ MUSIC ] This story There's a lot pieces to it. As of yet unconfirmed that a plane has hit the World Trade Center. And you can see that [ CROSSTALK ] It's got tons of smoke billowing out of the south tower. Unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers. Around 8: 40 and I ended up going down into the lobby. I know as soon as I got out of the elevator and started towards the door on the west side of the north tower when you heard a thud. I walked outside through the revolving door and I looked up above me and I see smoke billowing out at the top. The North tower. I turned around and thought I had no place to go. I couldn't outrun the debris that was coming down at me so I felt that the safest place for me to go would be to go back into the building, into the lobby. But I got as far as in the revolving door where all the oxygen, the temperature went up inside the door to like, an oven. Next thing I know I was lying out- In the middle of the driveway that leads up to that overpass, and I had been blown out of the building. [ SOUND ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Hundreds dead, the number could rise. Among the dead, six- [ CROSSTALK ] The Taj Mahal Hotel has played a big role in my life since I was a little girl. My parents got married at the Taj, I got married at the Taj and it has a you know, great personal significance to me. What we really heard was a very loud crash, I thought I tree had fallen and you could see the host just kind of, you know... Looking through the window. A minute later she said that nobody move, somebody's dead in the corridor. I've never heard a gun being fired and we then realized they were gunshots. Many, many gunshots. The staff knew all the back passageways and the terrorists didn't and they used that tactical advantage. To save us, to save their guests rather than to save themselves. Hundreds of us should have died, I mean we shouldn't be here. A peace rally has turned deadly in the Turkish capital Ankara after [ INAUDIBLE ]. This dangerously divided country is even more divided now. [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ NOISE ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ MUSIC ] Post traumatic stress is very strange. It makes a situation be right below the surface. [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] The sounds of the second plane striking the building and the noise it made when it struck the building, it must have been a real whining High pitched sound that right to this day goes through me like a knife. [ MUSIC ] It's very traumatic, when somebody has died, and you have lived. And that survivor's guilt is real, and it's universal. It's something to process, but then it's something that will either make you, or break you. [ MUSIC ] It remains to me, as amazing of a place as it Always was. I really felt protected there. I felt that people saved me there. And not only the people having [ UNKNOWN ] to say, but the spirit of that place, those walls. It saved me, it saved my husband, it saved so many of us. [ FOREIGN ] [ foreign 00: 06 ] I remember the first time I came into the city, it was very difficult for me, I mean I, walking down the narrow streets, around Times Square and stuff like that and I spent most of my time looking up between the buildings. [ foreign ] [ FOREIGN ] [ MUSIC ] In every place in the world we've had all these attacks lately. And they've happened under the name of Islam or jihad or whatever it is. But you know what? Terrorists are not people with religion. Terrorism is too powerful of a It to ever go away. The challenge for people is to understand that fear of that tactic and not allow themselves to be swayed. What are ways to combat these things that are happening? [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] What I have felt from my own personal experience with that, being a New Yorker and having lived through 9 / 11, is Said under extraordinary times ordinary people become extraordinary. 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