No state has lost as many as California; 776 men and women who called the Golden State home have died, 11% of the nation’s casualties. Nearly 20% of California’s war dead were old enough to die for their country but too young to buy a drink. They left behind 453 children.

There were concentric circles of trauma that rippled through Americans after the Sept. 11 attacks 20 years ago. The center of those circles are the survivors and their family members, the immediate impact of that attack on them searing and obvious. Then there were the first responders, the firefighters, the medical teams, the police officers and others who recovered and rescued.

Dorothy Morgan and the unnamed man's confirmed deaths are the first victims since October 2019 to be identified in the World Trade Center terrorist attacks that claimed 2,753 lives. However, around 1,106 people, or 40% of victims, have yet to be identified.

The 9/11 attacks drove many to recruiting stations, as the United States for a short time would see an uptick in Americans interested in military service and the willingness of higher-qualified candidates to enlist.

As the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, retired Army officers told us what it was like to be inside the Pentagon that day.

With the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks Saturday, the foundation is putting a renewed focus toward establishing a Global War on Terrorism Memorial as a place for veterans to gather and other Americans to learn about conflicts such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Indo-Pacific and the challenge of an emerging and increasingly forceful China were by no means totally ignored in the years since, but defense and Asia experts say that 9/11 and its aftermath sidetracked the U.S. in competing with China and has left America’s military at a disadvantage moving forward.

At the time of the terrorist attacks, the military command at MacDill oversaw operations in 27 countries, from the Horn of Africa, Asia, the northern Red Sea regions and the Arabian Peninsula.

Today, like more than 800,000 Americans who served in Afghanistan, Medal of Honor recipient Will Swenson struggles to come to terms with sacrifices made by both Afghans and U.S. troops in the nation's longest war amid the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorism attacks.

The war "was a huge detour away from what the Air Force had planned for the first decade of the new century," said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Virginia non-profit Lexington Institute and a defense analyst familiar with Wright-Patterson.