It’s September 11, 2010, and your family is in Brooklyn, visiting some cousins. On the way home from dinner, your sister points to the nearby New York City skyline.
Two beams of light are shining side by side among the buildings, reaching high into the air. You ask what they are, and your mom softly says, “It’s for 9/11.”
The United States was the target of a horrible act of terrorism, or violence to further a cause, on September 11, 2001. Terrorists took over four jet airliners. They crashed one into each of the two tall towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, destroying it. They crashed another plane into the Pentagon, damaging the nation’s military headquarters in Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania. Almost 3,000 people died in this shocking attack, which became known as 9/11. In response, President George W. Bush said the U.S. would launch a war on terrorism.
