By NiallO’Dowd

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 was the worst of times. The events of that day have shaped all of our lives since, and not for the better, no matter what corner of the globe we live in.

Every generation has a defining moment and this was ours, not the victory over Nazism as it was for our fathers, but rather the uncomprehending sense that our world as we knew it was being torn apart as we watched the Twin Towers fall.

Yes, we knew there was the running sore of the Middle East and that we were hated from afar. After the collapse of communism however, it seemed our world was about to be a better place and such problems could be solved.

The tenor of the times was captured by the political scientist Francis Fukuyama who wrote a best seller about the “End of History” that the West had won, and that all the world problems were about to be solved.

Instead we were back in an historical time warp. It was Muslim against Christians and Jews in a replay from the dawn of religion. The span of centuries had not diminished the hatreds one iota, it seemed.

It was hard to comprehend at the time how the world was changing in front of our eyes. America was a nation utterly assured of its invincibility and its safety from attack.

Two great oceans formed the perfect barrier to invasion. Our role as the only superpower surely gave us complete control over our lives.

Then came the planes and we found ourselves utterly adrift, all the old safety mechanisms powerless to help us. Our mighty army could not stop what happened, there was no government directly to blame. We longed for the old certainties.

It was not to be. They were gone forever. When the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were attacked our sense of invulnerability was lost forever. “Mere anarchy” was loosed upon the world.

Since then we have been a weakened giant, aware like never before of our vulnerabilities. The bombers have done their work in Madrid and London. Every day it seems there are airport alerts.

An undercurrent of constant fear runs through our lives. Our world will never be the same.

Now we have war in Iraq, and still in Afghanistan, where a major offensive against the Taliban has just commenced. We have saber rattling over Iran and possibly North Korea. The nightmare of endless enemies seemingly confronts us.

Worse, America’s place in the world is under fire. When the Twin Towers tragedy happened a leading French newspaper wrote that “we are all Americans now.”

Sadly that solidarity has long since faded and Americans, mostly because of the war in Iraq, now face international hostility on a global scale.

It should not be so. This country, despite its flaws, has always stood for democracy, whether it was destroying the Nazis or ending the nightmare of communism for so many Eastern European countries.

America is not the enemy; fundamentalism of whatever stripe is. We have seen the Koran and the Torah and the Bible used to justify every kind of killing imaginable, as if the great religious tracts were more about hate than love. We have clerics of all stripes who urge their armies on, daring them to do their worst.

At the Twin Towers and the Pentagon they did. In this brave new world we must not allow their hatreds to consume us all and force us into a terrible game of an eye for an eye.

As Nobel Peace laureate John Hume often remarked, such a strategy merely leaves us all blind. Politics, diplomacy and hope, must be our tools, and not war.