MINNEAPOLIMEDIA EDITORIAL | Twenty-Five Years After 9/11, Minnesota Still Lives With Its Consequences

The September 11 attacks changed American security, foreign policy and public life. Minnesota experienced that transformation through personal loss, military deployments, airport screening, expanded counterterrorism authority and the treatment of Muslim and immigrant communities. A quarter-century later, remembrance requires an honest account of the attack and the choices that followed.

MINNEAPOLIS, MN (September 11, 2026). Twenty-five years ago today, Tom Burnett, who grew up in Bloomington, called his wife from United Airlines Flight 93 and told her that the airplane had been hijacked.

Burnett made four calls as the events of September 11, 2001, unfolded. By the final conversation, he and other passengers had learned that hijacked aircraft had struck the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington. They understood that their airplane was also being used as a weapon.

Burnett told his wife that the passengers were going to act. They attempted to regain control of the aircraft before it crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Everyone aboard was killed, but the plane did not reach the destination selected by the hijackers. Burnett’s actions placed a Minnesotan inside one of the defining moments of that morning.

He was not Minnesota’s only connection to the loss. At least 11 people with Minnesota connections are believed to have died in the attacks, according to MPR News. Their relationships to Minnesota differed. Some were born or raised here. Others attended Minnesota schools, worked in the state or left family members and friends behind.

They were among the 2,977 people killed in New York, at the Pentagon and aboard the four hijacked aircraft. The victims represented many nationalities, occupations, religions and stages of life. Thousands of rescue, recovery and cleanup workers have since developed illnesses associated with exposure to toxic material at the World Trade Center site.

The attacks were carried out by 19 members of al-Qaeda. Their immediate targets were located far from Minnesota, but the consequences quickly entered Minnesota airports, military units, workplaces, schools, religious institutions and family homes.

A quarter-century later, the importance of September 11 cannot be measured only by the time that has passed. It must also be measured by the institutions created in response, the wars fought afterward, the government powers expanded, the communities subjected to suspicion and the generation of Americans that has never known the country as it existed before that morning.

Minnesota carries every part of that history.

The Day and the Decisions That Followed

A responsible assessment of September 11 must separate the attack from the decisions made afterward.

Al-Qaeda planned and executed the attacks. The United States government then determined how the country would respond. Those responses included military action, intelligence reorganization, aviation security, new investigative authority, immigration enforcement and international counterterrorism partnerships.

Some measures addressed weaknesses exposed directly by the attacks. Others extended far beyond aviation or the pursuit of al-Qaeda. Some received broad support when enacted but became more controversial as their operation and consequences became known.

This distinction is necessary because the phrase “September 11 changed America” can make the next 25 years sound inevitable. They were not. The attacks created fear, grief and an urgent demand for protection. Elected officials, military leaders, intelligence agencies and courts still made choices about how that protection would be pursued.

Congress enacted the USA PATRIOT Act weeks after the attacks, expanding federal investigative and surveillance authority. The Transportation Security Administration was created in November 2001, moving passenger screening from private contractors into a federal system. The Department of Homeland Security began operating in 2003, consolidating agencies and responsibilities connected to border security, emergency management, transportation and counterterrorism.

The federal government also established new intelligence-sharing systems and eventually created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center. Federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies developed closer working relationships intended to prevent agencies from holding information that another agency needed.

These changes were not theoretical. They altered ordinary American life.

Travelers who once accompanied relatives to airport gates could no longer pass beyond security without authorization. Passenger identification, baggage restrictions, watchlists, employee credentials and checkpoint screening became permanent parts of aviation. Government buildings and major public events adopted tighter access controls. Emergency planning increasingly accounted for deliberate attacks in addition to fires, severe weather and other conventional hazards.

For Minnesotans, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport became one of the most visible places where the post-September 11 government could be encountered. Security requirements that initially felt extraordinary became routine. Minnesotans born after the attacks entered adulthood without experiencing the earlier airport culture.

The United States gained stronger systems for coordinating threats and protecting aviation. It also entered a continuing debate over privacy, surveillance, due process and the limits of government authority. Those questions were not settled when the emergency legislation was signed, and they remain relevant as new technologies make it possible to collect, retain and analyze far more information than was imaginable in 2001.

Two Wars and a Generation of Service

The military consequences reached Minnesota almost immediately.

The United States entered Afghanistan in October 2001 after the Taliban government continued to provide sanctuary to al-Qaeda. NATO invoked Article 5 of its founding treaty for the first time, treating the attack on the United States as an attack on the alliance. Countries around the world contributed troops, intelligence, law-enforcement assistance and other support.

The Afghanistan war continued for nearly 20 years.

The United States invaded Iraq in March 2003 under a separate rationale centered on claims about weapons of mass destruction and the threat attributed to the government of Saddam Hussein. The 9/11 Commission later reported that it found no evidence that Iraq participated in the September 11 attacks and no evidence that contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda developed into a collaborative operational relationship.

Afghanistan and Iraq became closely connected in American political memory, but they were not the same war and did not arise from the same factual record. Maintaining that distinction is essential to understanding the post-September 11 period.

Both conflicts depended heavily on active-duty military personnel, reservists and National Guard members. Thousands of Minnesota service members deployed overseas during the broader period commonly called the Global War on Terror.

The Minnesota Army National Guard’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, served an extended deployment in Iraq. The tour was prolonged during the 2007 increase in American forces, requiring Guard members and their families to absorb additional months of uncertainty after preparing for their return.

These were citizen-soldiers with civilian lives in Minnesota. They were teachers, public employees, mechanics, health-care workers, business owners, students and parents. When they deployed, employers lost workers, children lost daily contact with parents and spouses assumed additional household responsibilities. Rural communities and smaller cities could feel the absence of a deployed unit with particular intensity.

Some service members returned with physical injuries. Others experienced post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury or difficulty readjusting to civilian life. Some returned without lasting medical problems but still had to reconstruct careers, relationships and family routines interrupted by deployment.

Their experiences should not be collapsed into one story. Many veterans remain proud of their service while holding different conclusions about the wars in which they served. Respecting military service does not require assuming that every service member shares the same political judgment about those conflicts.

The 25th anniversary therefore belongs not only to those who remember watching the attacks. It also belongs to the Minnesota families that spent years measuring time through departures, military calls, postponed returns and homecomings.

How America Began Viewing the World

Before September 11, the United States had already experienced terrorism, conflict and attacks on American interests. The 2001 attacks nevertheless changed the prominence of those threats in public life.

American national-security policy became increasingly organized around terrorist networks, insurgencies, borderless financing systems and governments accused of providing sanctuary to violent organizations. Countries that had occupied little space in everyday American discussion became central to military and diplomatic policy.

The government developed a doctrine under which threats might be confronted before they reached American territory. Intelligence gathering expanded. Military and intelligence operations increasingly relied on special operations forces, remotely piloted aircraft and partnerships with foreign governments.

The public also became accustomed to a national vocabulary of threat levels, watchlists, sleeper cells, radicalization and homeland security. Terrorism influenced elections, federal budgets, immigration policy, policing and popular culture. It changed how Americans interpreted conflicts abroad and how readily foreign instability was understood as a possible domestic danger.

That focus produced genuine improvements in counterterrorism coordination. The United States and its partners disrupted plots, tracked financing networks and weakened portions of al-Qaeda’s leadership. No foreign terrorist organization has repeated an attack in the United States on the scale of September 11.

The record also includes serious controversy. Indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay, abusive interrogation practices, secret detention facilities, civilian casualties, warrantless surveillance and the treatment of prisoners damaged confidence in American adherence to the standards it promoted internationally.

The years after September 11 taught Americans to take transnational threats seriously. They also demonstrated the danger of allowing fear to erase distinctions among countries, conflicts, religious movements and individual people.

How the World Began Viewing America

The world’s response to September 11 was not static.

The attacks initially produced widespread sympathy for the United States. Vigils were held across national and religious boundaries. Allies offered assistance. NATO’s use of Article 5 demonstrated that the attacks were understood as a challenge to international security rather than an exclusively American tragedy.

That solidarity weakened as the American response expanded.

The invasion of Iraq produced deep disagreements with governments and populations that had supported action against al-Qaeda. The failure to find the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction described before the invasion damaged American credibility. Images from Abu Ghraib prison, reports of secret detention and continuing legal disputes over Guantánamo gave critics evidence that the United States was not consistently following the democratic and human-rights principles it asked other countries to respect.

The resulting international picture cannot be reduced to the statement that the world either supported or opposed America. Many governments continued cooperating closely with the United States on intelligence and military operations while disagreeing with particular policies. Some populations distinguished between Americans and their government. Other governments used controversial American actions to deflect criticism of their own conduct.

The United States remained a central economic, military and diplomatic power, but the moral authority generated by the immediate international response to September 11 proved difficult to preserve.

That history matters in Minnesota. The state’s businesses, universities, immigrant communities, agricultural exporters, military units and international partnerships connect it to countries affected by American foreign policy. Decisions made in Washington can shape whether Minnesota residents are welcomed, questioned or viewed with skepticism when they work, study or travel abroad.

Minnesotans also bring international experience into the state. Refugees and immigrants may understand American military and diplomatic decisions not as distant policy debates but as forces that affected their families, governments and countries of origin.

Muslim Minnesotans and the Burden of Collective Suspicion

One of the most enduring domestic consequences of September 11 was the treatment of Muslim, Arab, Sikh and South Asian Americans.

Muslim Americans were among those who grieved on September 11. They were also among the emergency workers, medical professionals, military personnel and public employees who responded. Yet many were required to answer for crimes committed by people they had never met and organizations they did not support.

Nationally, FBI statistics show that reported anti-Islamic hate-crime incidents rose from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001. The annual figure later declined, but it has not returned to the pre-September 11 level.

A 2026 Pew Research Center survey found that 59 percent of Muslim Americans said there was substantial discrimination against Muslims in the United States. Forty-three percent of American adults said Muslims were less patriotic than other Americans, while 42 percent said Muslims had a negative effect on the country. Some respondents explicitly connected their views to September 11.

Those findings are particularly important in Minnesota, home to one of the country’s largest Somali American communities and many Muslims whose families came from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and other parts of the world.

Somali Minnesotans encountered increased scrutiny in the aftermath of the attacks. Federal action against the al-Barakaat financial network in late 2001 disrupted remittance channels used by families sending money to relatives in Somalia. In later years, banks withdrew from portions of the Somali remittance business because of regulatory, compliance and terrorism-financing concerns.

For many Minnesota families, remittances were not optional gifts. They helped relatives purchase food, medicine and shelter in a country where conventional banking infrastructure was limited. The interruptions showed how a global counterterrorism decision could reach directly into a household in Minneapolis, Saint Paul or the surrounding suburbs.

Minnesota later became a major focus of federal investigations into the recruitment of young people by al-Shabaab in Somalia. A small number of young men left the Twin Cities to join or attempt to join the organization. Those cases presented legitimate public-safety concerns and required investigation.

They did not make the broader Somali community responsible.

That distinction was sometimes lost in political rhetoric and public discussion. Entire neighborhoods were described primarily through security concerns. Families trying to prevent recruitment could find themselves treated as suspects rather than partners. Women wearing hijab reported discrimination in schools, workplaces and public settings. Sikhs and members of other faiths also faced hostility from people who wrongly associated appearance, clothing or ethnicity with terrorism.

Minnesota’s experience demonstrates that effective counterterrorism and protection of civil rights are not competing responsibilities. Investigating identifiable conduct is different from treating a religious or ethnic population as inherently suspicious. Failure to maintain that difference weakens trust, alienates potential community partners and violates the principle that responsibility attaches to individuals rather than groups.

The state’s Muslim communities have spent the past 25 years doing more than responding to suspicion. They have built businesses, schools, nonprofits, cultural institutions and houses of worship. Muslim Minnesotans have served in government, health care, education, law enforcement and the military. Somali Minnesotans have become increasingly visible in civic and political life.

Their history belongs inside Minnesota’s September 11 account because it shows both the damage caused by collective blame and the ability of communities to claim their place within the state.

The Generation That Does Not Remember

The anniversary now carries a new responsibility because September 11 is moving from lived memory into history.

Americans born after 2001 are old enough to serve in Congress, command military units, teach school, raise children and make decisions about the institutions created before they were born. They inherited the TSA, Department of Homeland Security, overseas counterterrorism operations and expanded security authority without experiencing the events that produced them.

For many younger Minnesotans, September 11 is encountered through classroom lessons, memorial ceremonies and video recordings that have been replayed for 25 years. They may know the images without understanding the decisions that followed.

Education about September 11 must therefore extend beyond a chronology of collapsing buildings. Students should learn who carried out the attacks, how al-Qaeda developed, why the United States entered Afghanistan and why the Iraq invasion was a separate decision. They should understand the roles of first responders and the passengers of Flight 93. They should also learn about military families, civil-liberties debates, anti-Muslim discrimination, international reaction and the long-term health consequences for people exposed at Ground Zero.

This history should neither be sanitized nor converted into an argument that every American response was a failure. The record contains successful security reforms, individual courage, international cooperation, strategic errors, government misconduct and consequences that remain disputed.

The generation without a personal memory of September 11 deserves the complete record.

Conclusion: Remembering the Attack and Examining the Aftermath

Minnesota should remember September 11 in its entirety.

That means remembering Tom Burnett and the other people with Minnesota connections who were killed. It means recognizing the firefighters, police officers, emergency workers and civilians who entered danger to help strangers. It means acknowledging the military personnel and families who carried the wars for years after public attention moved elsewhere.

It also means examining the powers government acquired, the purposes those powers served and the controversies they produced. It means distinguishing the war against al-Qaeda from the decision to invade Iraq. It means acknowledging that the United States received extraordinary international solidarity and later lost portions of that goodwill.

Minnesota’s remembrance must also include Muslim and immigrant residents who shared the country’s grief while being asked to prove their loyalty. Their experiences are not peripheral to the history. They reveal how fear can move from legitimate concern about an identifiable threat to unjustified suspicion of neighbors.

The most honest account of September 11 allows more than one truth to stand.

The country faced a real and organized terrorist enemy. Government had an obligation to protect the public. Intelligence and aviation security required reform. International cooperation disrupted violent organizations and prevented attacks.

The response also produced policies that extended beyond the people responsible, wars with consequences lasting decades and intrusions on rights that required legal and public scrutiny. Recognizing those costs does not diminish the victims. It respects them enough to examine what was done in their names.

Twenty-five years later, the institutions created after September 11 remain part of American life. The veterans are still here. The families of those killed still carry their losses. The health consequences continue. The international relationships remain altered. The Muslim children who grew up under the shadow of collective suspicion are now raising children of their own.

September 11 is no longer only a memory of where people were when they heard the news. It is a historical period whose consequences can be documented in Minnesota’s airports, military records, immigrant communities, veterans’ services and civic institutions.

The anniversary should begin with the 2,977 people who were killed. It should honor their lives without using their deaths to end legitimate examination of the years that followed.

Minnesota did not stand outside September 11. Minnesotans died in the attacks, served in the resulting wars, enforced the new security systems, lived under their scrutiny and inherited the country those systems helped create.

A quarter-century later, responsible remembrance requires the state to hold that entire history together. The attack must be remembered accurately. The courage must be honored. The consequences must be examined. The next generation must be given enough truth to understand not only what happened to the United States on September 11, 2001, but what the United States chose to do afterward and how those choices continue to shape life in Minnesota today.

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