A public conversation marking 25 years since the 11 September 2001 attacks will be held at ANU. Moderated by Professor Mark Kenny, the conversation will bring together US constitutional-law scholar Professor Dakota Rudesill, and former Chief of the Defence Force Admiral Chris Barrie AC, RAN (Retd), who will reflect on the human tragedy of 9/11, Australia's invocation of ANZUS, the Afghanistan war, and the growth of counter-terror powers. Importantly, we will address the difficult question of how democracies should respond to shock without sacrificing judgement, liberty or accountability.

ANZUS was formally invoked by the Howard government on 14 September 2001, an act the government described as based on Article IV and consultation with the United States. The treaty's terms concern consultation and action by each party in accordance with its constitutional processes. It does not invoke an automatic commitment equivalent to NATO's collective-defence clause.

9/11 was not without warning. The World Trade Center had already been attacked in 1993. The question for a 25-year retrospective is not only how the attacks of 2001 occurred, but why the warning embedded in the first attack did not produce an adequate response to the threat that followed.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whom the 9/11 Commission identified as the principal architect of the attacks, later accepted responsibility for their planning and execution in a 2007 Guantánamo tribunal statement.

The 9/11 attacks, sometimes described as a modern Pearl Harbor, heralded a significant change in how the West responded to active and latent terrorism. Lasting for about 20 years, the aftermath included an initial special operation to cleanse Afghanistan of Al Qaeda training camps, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2004 re-insertion of coalition forces into Afghanistan intended to facilitate regime change.

A key issue is not that fiction "predicted" 9/11, nor that an individual terrorist borrowed a thriller plot. It is that the use of aircraft as weapons had appeared in terrorist planning, intelligence fragments, and even popular imagination before 2001, yet our institutions did not convert those signals into an operationally actionable warning.

The 9/11 Commission's account identifies KSM as the principal architect and records Mohamed Atta's designation as operational leader of the plotters. KSM's earlier Bojinka-linked ideas included hijacking an aircraft to strike CIA headquarters, an important lineage for the later attack concept.

Image credit: National September 11 Memorial South Pool, New York City, Jakub Hałun

Additional information:
Registration is required for this event. If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email bell.marketing@anu.edu.au. Accessible parking spaces are available around campus should you require them.

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