Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher of the late 19th century who challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality.

He was interested in the enhancement of individual and cultural health, and believed in life, creativity, power, and the realities of the world we live in, rather than those situated in a world beyond.

Nietzsche became especially influential in French philosophical circles during the 1960's-1980's, when his “God is dead” declaration, his perspectivism, and his emphasis upon power as the real motivator and explanation for people's actions revealed new ways to challenge established authority and launch effective social critique.

Perspectivism is the philosophical position that one's access to the world through perception, experience, and reason is possible only through one's own perspective and interpretation. It rejects both the idea of a perspective-free or an interpretation-free objective reality.

Samuel Huntington (1927-2008) was an influential American conservative political scientist, adviser and academic. He spent more than half a century at Harvard University.

He is most well known for his 1993 theory The Clash of Civilisations.

In his essay which was then turned into a book Huntington argued that the conflicts up until 1945 were dominated by a desire for increased land. Between 1945 and the end of the Cold War in 1989, conflicts were clashes of Ideology.

Huntington argued that future wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures and that Islamic extremism would become the biggest threat to Western world domination.

Edward Said (1935-2003) was a Palestinian American literary theorist and professor of comparative literature at Columbia University.

His most influential book, Orientalism (1978), explored the West’s patronizing perceptions of “the East”. While Said’s exploration was that of fictional texts, he labeled an underlying attitude towards the societies and peoples of Asia, North Africa and the Middle East.

The principal characteristic of Orientalism is a “subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arab–Islamic peoples and their culture”; a prejudice derives from Western images (representations) that reduce the Orient to the fictional essence of “Oriental peoples”.

The thesis of Orientalism (1978) proposes that much of the Western study of Islamic civilization was an exercise in political intellectualism; a psychological exercise in the self-affirmation of “European identity”; not an objective exercise of intellectual enquiry and the academic study of Eastern cultures.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was an English philosopher of the Enlightenment period.

His understanding of humans as being matter and motion, obeying the same physical laws as other matter and motion, remains influential; and his account of human nature as self-interested cooperation, and of political communities as being based upon a “social contract” remains one of the major topics of political philosophy.

In his landmark work Leviathan Hobbes argues that mankind is driven by a “perpetual need for power after power” and that this need will determine guarantee ongoing conflict.

Hobbes’ view countered the dominant Judeo-Christian view which saw mankind as being created “in the image and likeness of God” and fundamentally peace-loving.

Megan Stack was a journalist for the LA Times who covered the US invasion of Afghanistan after September 11 and covered the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.

Stack documented her time in that region in her book Every Man in this Village is a Liar. Her autobiographical account is critical of the US involvement in the region and the price that has ultimately been paid for the “war on terror”.

Stack explores the notion of ‘truth’ and the incongruence of what we are told is true with what she sees to be true.

Inevitably Stack's book ends as it has begun, with the line, "You can survive and not survive, both at the same time." The emotional damage is palpable. And there is no "redemption" – a favoured American urge to resolve a narrative – no explicable "clarity of vision" of this Middle Eastern excursion. Maybe, she implies, it will never come.

On the morning of September 11 2001 a series of 4 coordinated terrorist attacks were launched by al-Qaeda on the United States.

Four passenger airliners were hijacked by 19 al-Qaeda terrorist and flown into buildings in suicide attacks. American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 were crashed into the North and South towers of the World Trade Centre complex in New York City. American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon outside Washington DC. The fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93 was targeting Washington DC but crashed into a field near Pennsylvania.

2996 people died in the attacks. The attacks also caused at least $10 billion in property and infrastructure damage.

United Airlines Flight 93 was hijacked 45 minutes after takeoff from Newark International Airport on September 11 2001.

After the hijackers took control of the plane, several passengers and flight attendants were able to make phone calls and learn that attacks had already been made by other hijacked airliners on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

The passengers attempted to regain control of the plan and in the process the plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania killing all 44 passengers on board.

This can be seen as the first response to the terrorist attacks on September 11 and an act of courage and defiance by the passengers who knew that they would almost certainly not survive.

Salman Hamdani (1977-2001) was a Pakistani American student part-time Emergency Medical Technician. He was one of the first responders to be killed on September 11 when the World Trade Centre collapsed.

Because of his Muslim background, he was investigated for possible involvement in the terrorist attacks. His home was searched, property confiscated and his friends and family interrogated.

Congressman Keith Ellison testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security in March 2011 and addressed the issue of the targeting of Muslim American in the days, weeks and years after September 11. He said “Mohammed Salman Hamdani was a fellow American who gave his life for other Americans.  His life should not be defined as a member of an ethnic group or a member of a religion, but as an American who gave everything for his fellow citizens.”

The War on Terror refers to the global military campaign that started after the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks.

The US led a coalition of other NATO and non NATO countries in a campaign to destroy al-Qaeda.

On Sept. 14, 2001, Congress approved a resolution authorizing the President “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harboured such organizations or person.”

President George W Bush first used the term “War on Terror” on 20 September 2001. In 2013 President Barack Obama announced that the US was no longer pursuing a War on Terror, as the military focus should be on specific enemies

Since then, most of the leaders and participants in the 9/11 terrorist attacks have been killed or captured. But the United States not only remains at war in Afghanistan, it continues to suffer significant casualties there.

In the 12 years since September 11, 2,144 U.S. military personnel have given their lives fighting in and around Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.

As the years after September 11 have marched on there has been increased disquiet among the American public at the human and financial cost of a conflict that does not appear to have achieved significant, long term changes in the region or indeed the world.

Saddam Hussein (1937-2006) was the 5th President of Iraq.

He was a leading member of the revolutionary Ba’ath Party.

He was widely condemned in the west for being a brutal dictator.

In 2003 a coalition led by the US invaded Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein. President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of the UK accused him of possessing weapons of mass destruction and having ties to al-Qaeda.

Saddam Hussein was captured on 13 December 2003 and executed on 30 December 2006.

Osama Bin Laden (1957-2011) was the founder of al-Qaeda, the organisation that claimed responsibility for the September 11 attacks on the United States and also numerous other mass casualty attacks against civilian and military targets. Osama Bin Laden was a Saudi Arabian and member of the wealthy bin Laden family.

He joined Mujahideen forces in 1979 to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The Mujahideen were provided financial aid and weapons by the US. He formed al-Qaeda in 1988.

A major component of bin Laden's ideology was the concept that civilians from enemy countries, including women and children, were legitimate targets for jihadists to kill.

The Arab Spring was a wave of pro-democracy protests and uprisings that took place in the Middle East and North Africa beginning in 2010 and 2011, challenging some of the region’s entrenched authoritarian regimes. Demonstrators expressing political and economic grievances faced violent crackdowns by their countries’ security forces.

In January and February 2011 protests in Tunisia and Egypt succeeded in a matter of weeks in toppling two regimes thought to be among the region’s most stable.

Protest movements then took hold in Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria. Unlike Egypt and Tunisia, protests in these countries led to protracted bloody struggles between opposition groups and the ruling regimes.

Chapter 14 Atwar Bahjat (1976-2006) was an Iraqi

journalist for al-Jazeera and later al-Arabiya following the US invasion of Iraq. She was abducted, raped and murdered in 2006.

Megan Stack writes “Her aspirations were the finest hopes of a broken country; her murder reeked of the hopelessness of a lost cause.”

Photos of Iraqi prisoners tethered to dog leashes and electrical wires dominated the news when they emerged in 2003 and 2004. The abuse scandal centered at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad aroused bipartisan shock in the US and embarrassment abroad.

Eleven U.S. soldiers were convicted in military trials of crimes related to the humiliation and abuse of the prisoners.

The pictures taken last November, showing U.S. soldiers inflicting pain and humiliation on Iraqi prisoners, were at the center of a classified Army investigation into alleged abuse at the notorious prison.