© AFP / SAUL LOEBUS Vice President Joe Biden places a wreath at the 9/11 Memorial in the Pentagon in Washington, DC.
This year marks the 21st anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the United States. Twenty-one is not traditionally a high-profile day of remembrance. People like to mark the passing of the years based upon the attractiveness of the calendar, as opposed to the actual relevance of the moment. One-year anniversaries are important; two years less so. The tenth anniversary is a big deal; not so the eleventh.
Last year, the US and the world marked the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. What made this date more important than the simple passage of time was that it was relevant - the 2021 event marking America's entry into what was to become known as the "Global War on Terrorism" occurred less than a month after America's ignominious retreat from Afghanistan. The Kabul evacuation of August 2021 was the final act in a two-decade-long drama which saw the vision of a "new American century" espoused by an American neoconservative elite, who looked to exploit the horror of 9/11 by turning it into a catalyst for world domination, run aground on the shoals of geopolitical reality, capsizing, and ultimately sinking in a self-created storm of national hubris.
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