Today, as we all know, marks another, far graver anniversary than yesterday’s joyous events. Even though I may criticize the American government for their gross mishandling of the aftermath of the atrocities, that anyone would hijack four commercial jets and turn them into missiles is an affront to civilisation itself.

The question, however, remains: why would anyone do such a thing? I mean, how can anyone justify such an act? As a reasonably educated young man in the west, living a comfortable petit-bourgeois life, it is beyond my comprehension; I’m quite sure it will be for anyone likely to read this. to me, however, this fact leads me to think that we need to understand what lead these men to do such things. It cannot be as simple as hatred, unreasoning and pure. Yes old Ahab hated the white whale, but the white whale bit off Ahab’s leg. Indeed, the leg was bitten off, was it not, because Ahab was hunting Moby dick to start with? My point, as I’ve written before, is that instead of going in all guns blazing to get the bad guys, we need to recognise that good and bad are but two sides of one coin, and that the only way to get rid of terrorism is to address the root causes.