
NEW YORK -- The United States is days away from marking the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which brought down the World Trade Center towers in New York City and collapsed part of the Pentagon, outside Washington. Nikkei interviewed Thomas Friedman, The New York Times' foreign affairs columnist, and asked him to look back on how the attacks affected the world in terms of history and thought. The following are edited excerpts from the interview.