The savagery of the terrorist attacks against the US by al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001, was juxtaposed against the cloudless skies of a gorgeous late summer day. Against that azure sky and the elegant skyline of Lower Manhattan, facing being burned alive as the flames rose before the towers collapsed, desperate men and women chose instead to take control of the last few moments of their lives by hurling themselves to their deaths. Then the Pentagon was attacked, followed by the plane that disappeared over Pennsylvania. 2,977 innocent souls were murdered that day.

The country palpably changed in an instant. America had a choice of how to respond. It could hunt down the al-Qaeda leadership, killing those it could not capture and destroying their camps in Afghanistan. Or the United States could launch a major invasion of Afghanistan, remove the ruling Taliban from power, occupy the country, and attempt to rebuild the state. When George W Bush stood atop the rubble in the heart of the US financial capital and vowed the perpetrators would soon “hear from all of us,” major military preparations were well underway. That too was palpable. Twenty-five years on, there has not been a single day that the US has not been in conflict. Congress’s 2001 Authorisation for the Use of Military Force (“AUMF”) remains in force today. Every president since, through........

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