A man walks through the 9/11 Empty Sky memorial at sunrise across from New York’s Lower Manhattan and One World Trade Center in Liberty State Park in Jersey City, New Jersey. REUTERS/Gary Hershorn
The twentieth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States creates an important moment for reflection on the nature of threats facing Canada in an increasingly uncertain and tumultuous world.
The subsequent war in Afghanistan had, according to US President Joe Biden, three objectives: to “get” the terrorists who perpetrated the attack, to deliver “justice” to Osama bin Laden and to keep Afghanistan from becoming a base from which future attacks could be launched. The close affiliation of the Taliban government, the Haqqani network and al-Qaeda does not bode well for the latter objective.
