9/11 is and always will be one of America’s saddest events in our history. Americans became more aware of our vulnerability and the safety of the United States was no longer guaranteed. We looked for a scapegoat. The attack involved four planes two that hit the world trade center, one plane hitting the pentagon, and one plane hitting a field that was thought to hit the white house. For me 9/11 was just a history topic, but for Mr.Leandro and America, it was a life changing experience.

Mr.Leandro said that he was “getting ready for work” at 6 in the morning when he heard about the first plane that crashed. At first he thought that it was an accident, but by the time the second plane crashed, he knew that “something was up” and that it wasn’t an accident. Then, he heard rumors about an attack in Los Angeles and he was worried about family members.
Mr.Leandro said that he came to the United States when he was 7 years of age. He states that “things have changed” since he came to the United States at the age of 7. Since that time Mr. Leandro also says that “growing in my teens to my twenties I felt that the government was bad and this was an evil place.” Since 9/11 happened a high percentage of people had negative thoughts about people in the middle east, Mr. Leandro said that “somebody said that they were evil, jealous of of our freedom, but I don't believe that.”

When I talked to Mr. Leandro I learned that a high majority of people can have a different opinion on the same event, even if it is almost certain that they would have the same opinion as you. For example, when the attack happened, the variety of people in the United States had negative thoughts about middle easterners, but George W. Bush just said that “Business has to be usual or the terrorist win. “

I also learned that no matter where you are in a real world event “there is not a safe place anywhere.” Which is true, that’s why “people were really worried about another attack in the United States.” However we still have to move forward.

Even though al-Qaeda is still angry at the United States they should have made a nonviolent approach similar to Mahatma Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, and Martin Luther King Jr, are heroes that practice nonviolence.” Since Osama used to be “trained by the U.S. military” he should know that there are ways of performing a nonviolent approach.

To this day, a few Americans still have negative thoughts about middle easterners, even though not all of them were a part of the 9/11 attack. Mr.Leandro said that “There was an article, I will never forget this picture of a car bombing going off, and there was a lady holding a baby and there was terror in this child.”