Some events in American history exist in a category of their own. September 11, 2001, is one of them.
It remains a date etched into the national memory — not simply as a tragedy, but as a moment of shared grief and collective resolve. Nearly 3,000 lives were lost. Families were shattered. The skyline of New York changed forever. And in a Pennsylvania field, passengers aboard United Flight 93 made a decision that saved countless lives at the cost of their own.
That is why comparisons to 9/11 carry extraordinary weight. They are not casual rhetorical tools. They are not interchangeable metaphors. And when they are used loosely — particularly in partisan political arguments — the reaction is often swift and severe.
Position of the Bulwark is now that the government of the United States is a terrorist organization that should be treated the way we treated the Taliban in 2001. https://t.co/sdCLXed9do
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) February 25, 2026
This week, The Bulwark published a piece drawing a comparison between the memorials for Alex Pretti and Renee Good — two Minnesotans killed in a January incident involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and the makeshift memorial that emerged in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after Flight 93 crashed on 9/11. The article’s headline placed the names side by side. Its subheader declared, “The memorials are the same; it’s the terrorists who have changed.”
The author argued that while the victims of Flight 93 were killed by foreign terrorists, Pretti and Good were killed by “terrorists acting under the aegis of the president of the United States,” describing their deaths as policy rather than accident.
The comparison ignited backlash.
Critics contend that equating ICE agents with al-Qaeda hijackers crosses a line — rhetorically, historically, and morally. National Review’s Dan McLaughlin characterized the argument as suggesting that the U.S. government should be viewed the way Americans viewed the Taliban in 2001.
At the heart of the controversy is the enduring sensitivity surrounding 9/11. For many Americans, the memory is personal. The author of the Bulwark piece acknowledged in a footnote that his own aunt died in the North Tower and that he has never visited Ground Zero because the experience would be too painful.
