9/11 from a US citizen's eye

The David Foster Wallace piece we originally read inspired me to look into how people in different parts of the US lived that day, rather than simply reading survival stories. That way, I could have a broader view of how an entire country faced tragedy and the general reaction towards it. It's almost as if time slowed down when the first tower was struck and by the time the second crash was broadcasted, time had stopped altogether. An entire country found itself glued to the news channel, waiting fearfully for new attacks, as the Pentagon caught fire and the towers collapsed.
Only people whose jobs consist of tracking terrorist groups would ever have really considered a direct attack to the United States. This, I find, goes a long way in explaining the disbelief, aside from the fact that planes were flying into buildings which is already hard to believe. Confusion is the most recurrent theme in all of the 9/11 memories, after all, when the Cold War ended there was literally no one who could really pose a threat to the United States, or at least that's what it seemed. All of the stories I read reflected this, the disbelief, the hidden humiliation behind the fear. September 11th reminded the United States that the end of the Cold War didn't mean world peace had been achieved, in fact, it began a whole new cycle of wars.