My memories of 9/11 terror attacks are still too painful – Yorkshire Post Letters

THE horror of today’s date is seared into our personal memory forever as we remember, 20 years ago, the appalling tragic loss of life from the attack of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Centre in New York and the two separate air crashes.

Almost 3,000 deaths in total. We had a friend who worked in the Pentagon but she, fortunately, had taken a day off. I cannot watch those infamous images of the two aircraft hitting the Twin Towers. It’s incomprehensible and too painful.

Even after all these years, the barbaric and pointless atrocities cannot excuse the world’s worst Islamic extremist act of terrorism on a free society and innocent people. What could possess humans to be driven by such cruelty and ideology in the name of a religion?

On this day we also cannot forget the bravery of the New York firemen – 344 of them who lost their lives – and think of all the poor souls who perished for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

For 20 years America, Britain and other allies have lost many lives and limbs in the bloodbath of Afghanistan in fighting the Taliban to bring education and opportunities to girls and women, and to rid the country of terrorist bases.

There have been some successes to the country brought about by the foreign occupation but how ironic that in the end the Taliban – a ragtag mob of men with guns on the back of 4x4s – won the final battle, virtually without firing a shot, after the Afghan army of 300,000 highly and expensively trained soldiers with $83bn of the world’s most advanced military kit, capitulated in hours.

Today we must remember all those who lost loved ones and friends, who contributed to life, their families and public service.

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