Twenty years ago 9/11 changed everything for the West and now China’s rise and COVID-19 are part of the story

“Our youths love death as you love life”.

That was the chilling message Osama Bin Laden sent to the West when he “declared war” in 1996.

His followers, he said, would fight “as long as they live” until Americans were expelled from the “Holy Lands”, “defeated and humiliated”.

Five years later on September 11, 2001, Bin Laden launched his most audacious assault when hijacked planes hit the Twin Towers of New York City’s World Trade Centre and the Pentagon building in Washington DC.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in what remains the deadliest terrorist attack in history.

Almost 20 years on, there is still so much to understand about this event that changed our world. It triggered a “War on Terror” that has never ended. The war in Afghanistan…