Six years ago today, nineteen men hijacked four planes, two of which crashed into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon. Two thousand, nine hundred and seventy-four people died as a result of the actions of the hijackers. Twenty-four people are still listed as missing. The victims of the attacks included eight children, ranging in age from two to eleven years old.

The facts and figures of that surreal day convey only a tiny fraction of the loss, the fury, the anguish and horror. The passengers on Flights United 175, American 11 and American 77, the victims in the WTC and the Pentagon, and the firefighters, policemen and emergency workers who were killed as they fought to save others’ lives – all became the victims of a cause that had never attempted mediation or dialogue, a cause untempered by the prospect of a two-year-old child’s terror as his airplane disintegrated into flames around him.

The waves of that day are with us still. Paranoid airport security, shaded racism and the ever-present desire to fight back are testaments that something inside the collective Western psyche has been broken, never to be fixed.

Although the 9/11 attacks happened six years ago, the need to find and eradicate terror and the circumstances in which it comes into being has not diminished. The hijackers forgot – or chose not to remember – that their victims were human, normal people with daily lives. They prioritized hatred and a mistaken belief that their cause would be aided by death and destruction above rational ways to come to a solution. We should never forget 9/11 – we should never make the same mistakes. This war will not be won by a blinkered, narrow approach that clings to outdated views on how to fight a war, but by intelligence, intuition and in-depth knowledge of psychology, politics and culture.