Another anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks has come and gone; this year commemorating the 22nd anniversary of the deadliest terror attack in American history.

There has never been an author qualified to try and sum up the impact of that day on American society, or the geopolitical shockwaves it has wrought the entire world over. We won’t attempt to become the first in this brief column here. To put it succinctly, the world has never been the same since that terrible day, nor will it ever be the same for those who lived through it and recall life before it happened.

For those old enough to remember a world prior to TSA security lines and the Patriot Act, or the heightened sense of anxiety that occurs any time something slightly unusual happens while aboard a commercial airliner, it is rational to question in the decades since the attack whether or not our nation’s efforts to safeguard itself against another similar attack have done their job, or only created the veil of a safer society.

Are hour-plus-long wait lines to go through intimidating security checkpoints, where all items are removed from us (including our shoes and belts), and reducing carry-on liquids to bottles containing 3.4 ounces or less really preventing another 9/11 from occurring? Or is it merely security theater — tactics used to create the illusion of safety rather than actively securing it?

There is no doubt that America’s airport security system was dangerously lax in 2001. Terrorists were able to exploit those vulnerabilities with relative ease. There’s little argument to defend whether or not allowing knives up to four inches aboard a plane was a bad idea in retrospect (as was the law back then). However, experiencing the full extent of invasiveness we have been subject to since the attack gives good reason to question whether the drastic swing in the opposite direction has been fully necessary, either.

Two would-be terrorists failed in their plots in the first decade following 9/11, not because the security that was initiated, but because their respective bombs (one hidden within a shoe, the other hidden within the bomber’s underwear, malfunctioned while aboard the plane). In June of 2015, undercover agents from the TSA itself found that TSA personnel failed to detect hidden weapons and contraband going through screenings in 95% of the test cases, which prompted more training and more investments in technology. A year later, would-be suicide bombers that were successfully turned away from a security checkpoint in Turkey opened fire with guns, killing 45 people and themselves in a hail of bullets; rendering even a successful anti-terror operation a devastating failure.

Today, our airports are fitted with the kind of security devices and technology that would have seemed laughable in a spy movie from 2001. Facial recognition cameras, full-body scanners, and detailed X-ray imaging all overseen by more than 65,000 security personnel wielding a more than $1.5 billion budget. There is no going back from this level of domineering scrutiny. It is our new reality.

So to answer our question posed at the beginning of this column — is the world safer since 9/11 — it depends entirely on your own perspective. There has not been another successful airplane-based terrorist attack since that day, so you could argue that the enhanced security measures have served their purpose.

But the question that truly haunts us in the post-9/11 world continues to be: What costs have we endured in the name of safety? What measures will be deemed necessary should they fail us one day in the future?

We hope to never find out.