Opportunity to reflect on war on terror's lessons

It was a peaceful morning on the United States East Coast. Nobody anticipated the calamity coming their way from the otherwise cloudless, beautiful sky. It was Sept 11, 2001.

From 8:46 am to 9:37 am, three of four hijacked passenger planes, bound for West Coast cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco from three East Coast airports, were crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon near Washington DC.

The images of the twin towers collapsing were as shocking as they were transformative, irrevocably changing the United States, and the world. Like all incidents of historic proportions, the 9/11 attacks have been at once unifying and divisive, inside the US and throughout the international community.