9/11 taught America to look outward. Then we looked away.

It’s September 11, 2026 — twenty-five years since the terror attack that shaped not only my generation, but the entire world. The issues, tensions and wars it prompted never really went away. They just changed shape.

I’m writing to you today from my hometown of Hutchinson, Kan. I was a fourth-grader here when the 9/11 terror attacks happened, old enough to understand what was happening but too young to really understand why.

I knew no one even tangentially connected to a victim. I had no personal connection to New York City, the Pentagon or Shanksville, Pa.

Except for one very important one: I was an American.

Back then, the country came together. We rallied and held each other. We planted flags in our front yards. People who had probably never given much thought to Afghanistan suddenly wanted to understand how something happening on the other side of the world had reached us here.

That unity is long gone now, but I still see versions of it when I travel to countries confronting tragedies of their own.

I think about Ukraine, where even playgrounds are painted in the national colors of yellow and blue. Russia’s invasion has seeped into almost every part of life there, and so has the determination to remain Ukrainian.

There is something beautiful about that kind of communion, but also something terribly sad about the fact that tragedy so often seems to be required to produce it.

We pay attention to the world when it comes and punches us in the face.

September 11 did that more violently than perhaps any event in modern American history. A country that could largely afford to treat faraway conflicts as somebody else’s problem suddenly discovered that distance wasn’t much protection at all.

Twenty-five years later, I worry we’ve forgotten that lesson.

I’m doing what I can to change that.

A large part of my job as a foreign correspondent has always been explaining why what happens over there matters here. Sometimes that’s easy — an attack kills Americans, a war sends energy prices soaring or an adversary threatens U.S. troops and suddenly the connection is obvious.

Other times, the consequences take years to arrive. But they always do.

Now, as our nation confronts another era of war and geopolitical upheaval, we are still living with decisions made in the aftermath of September 11.

The Iraq War tore apart the balance of power in the Middle East and created opportunities Iran would spend years exploiting.

NATO’s only invocation of Article 5 — the promise that an attack against one ally is an attack against all — came in defense of the United States after 9/11, and a quarter-century later, the future of that alliance hangs over nearly every conversation about Russia and Ukraine.

While America spent two decades focused on deserts and mountains in the Middle East and Central Asia, China was building — ports, infrastructure, technology networks, military capabilities and influence.

And Afghanistan, the country at the center of America’s longest war, largely disappeared from American attention again almost as quickly as the last U.S. troops departed.

The wars ended on paper, but the consequences didn’t.

There is another legacy of that day that I think about a lot, particularly now that I’ve built a publication around foreign correspondence.

September 11 didn’t just change American foreign policy — it changed my profession.

Before the attacks, major news organizations maintained foreign bureaus staffed by correspondents who actually lived in the countries they covered. They learned the politics, developed sources, knew the drivers and fixers and understood the thousand little details about a place that never make it into a government briefing.

Then the planes hit, and suddenly foreign news wasn’t a specialty — it was the only story.

Every major outlet needed people in Kabul, then Baghdad and across the broader Middle East and Central Asia. The demand was so sudden that it helped create an entire generation of war correspondents.

Reporters who might otherwise have spent years covering courts, cops or city hall were suddenly boarding planes for places most Americans had barely thought about.

When American troops went to war, journalists went with them.

The military embed system that became a defining feature of the Iraq War gave reporters extraordinary access to American forces. Some extraordinary journalism came from it.

Twenty-five years later, journalists are barely welcome in the Pentagon, let alone a war zone with US troops.

We’ve been reduced to talking heads broadcasting from studios thousands of miles away from where the action takes place. How do you tell a story without even seeing it?

If you really want to understand, you have to get out.

Wars don’t happen on maps. They happen in countries full of families, grudges, religions, ambitions, political factions and histories that existed long before the first American soldier arrived and will still be there after the last one leaves.

That’s why I’ve dedicated my life to telling these stories. And I’m so grateful you’re along for the journey with me.