9/11: the date that keeps reminding the world of unfinished business

CHANCES are, if you're over 30, you would probably be able to recall where you were when the Twin Towers in New York City collapsed on Sept 11, 2001.

Indeed, the horrifying images of the burning skyscrapers on Wall Street in Lower Manhattan (one of the world's global commercial centres) - with some of their desperate occupants jumping to their death - must remain etched in the minds of many residents of the global village who witnessed it in real time in New York, Paris, Buenos Aires or Jakarta. The Twin Towers (together with the Pentagon and Capitol Hill, the two other targets of the planes hijacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists) were symbols of American global economic and military might. And Osama bin Laden and his gang of anti-Western Islamist extremists had hoped that the pictures of these shattered American icons would deliver a devastating blow to US security and economic interests worldwide, not to mention the demoralising effect it would have had on the American people.

From that perspective, Al-Qaeda failed to achieve its goals; if anything, the 9/11 attacks had the contrary effect of unifying the American people behind their political and military leaders.