ABSTRACT
In the words of The 9/11 Commission Report (2004: xv), ‘September 11, 2001, was a day of unprecedented shock and suffering in the history of the United States. The nation was unprepared.’ It has been estimated that just under 3,000 people died in the combined attacks (Woodward 2004: 24). What made this attack so different from a previous surprise attack on the US, that of Pearl Harbor in 1941, was its very nature, stemming not from a nation-state but rather from a small band of transnational terrorists, and consequently seeming ‘in some ways more devastating’ (The 9/11 Commission Report 2004: 339).
