Twenty-five years after the attacks of 11 September 2001, the world is still living with their consequences.
It was not just the hijacking of 4 planes on suicide missions on 11th September 2001 which changed the world but how the USA and its allies responded the deadliest terrorist attack in American history. The attack exposed huge gaps in the American intelligence gathering systems of the CIA, the FBI and the National Security forces. The terrorist attacks on New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania killed almost 3,000 people and became a defining moment in modern history. Yet the story of 9/11 is about far more than a single day. It is also the story of how governments, societies and global institutions responded, and how those responses continue to shape our world. The revenge invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the USA and its allies, including the UK and Australia accelerated the rise of further terrorist groups. ISIS emerged out of al Qaeda links during the foreign occupation of Iraq 2003-2011, wreaking havoc until its eventual defeat in 2019. Small covert splinter groups are still operating today.
This course examines the attacks themselves, the intelligence failures that preceded them, and the far-reaching consequences that followed. We will explore the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the rise of ISIS, the evolution of global terrorism, and the impact of counter-terrorism policies on civil liberties, privacy and human rights.
Whether you lived through the events or want to better understand a turning point in modern history, this course offers a timely and thought-provoking exploration of one of the most consequential events of our age.
- Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower : al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, Alfred Aknopf, 2006 (Winner of Pulitzer Prize for non fiction in 2007)
- Mitchell Zuckoff, Fall and Rise : The Story of 9/11, 2019 Harper
- Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden, Penguin, 2004
- The nature of the attack by the 4 hijacked planes on 9/11 and the failure of American intelligence services before and during the attack
- Immediate and longer term consequences of both the attack and the response to the attack by the USA and its allies
- Factors which have driven a great number of conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attack
- The aspects of the attack which are still with us today, Osama bin Laden is dead by al Qaeda and ISIS are not
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
- Discuss the immediate and longer term consequences of the 9/11 attack
- Gain an understanding of what has driven both the political and military responses to the attack over the last 25 years
