The terrorists hoped that these attacks would send the entire civilization into the death spiral.
And they were right.
Almost all of the surveilance/security theater/thought police/war on terror bullshit we're dealing with today everywhere in the world, can be traced back to that very morning.
The whole "anti-terrorist" shebang scored way greater body count than the attacks themselves.
It's like we're in a bad timeline. I was alive to see it happen, and the world has never truly recovered from it ever since. Instead, it just collapses ever deeper into self-perpetuating self-consumption. This sucks.