That morning had started like any other. A blue sky shone benevolently over the Big Apple as people came and went about their business. A few hours later, the place that hitherto had been known as 1 World Trade Plaza looked as if it had been visited by the four horsemen of the Apocalypse on a bad hair day. Television footage showed two Boeing 747s colliding violently with two of the most recognizable symbols of Western wealth, suit-clad businessmen plunging to their deaths and witnesses gasping in horror and disbelief.

The impending third anniversary of what was known by the world press as «A day of infamy» or «The day that changed the world», is as good a time as any to look back at the sequence of events that 9/11 mothered. The sad observation that most objective bystanders will be forced to make is that al-Qaeda, aided by an inadmissibly belligerent Bush administration, has succeeded in the mission it had set for itself: polarize world opinion to the point where even traditional Western allies were estranged overnight.

The heart-felt solidarity expressed by the world in the days following the attacks has evaporated into thin-veiled international scorn for terms such «Coalition of the Willing», «War on Terror» and «Axis of Evil». Bush went to war with Afghanistan where he had limited success in dismantling an al-Qaeda network that has spread its tentacles across the globe with nightmarish ease. Bush went to and is still at war with Iraq even though he prematurely and pompously celebrated victory from the safety of an aircraft carrier several months ago. American troops are still dying daily. Scores of Iraqi civilians are too. As of yet, not one weapon of mass destruction (WMD) has been found. Enquiries in both the US and UK have ascertained this and yet have been reluctant to apportion the blame on those who decided to «democratize» Iraq.

The absence of such WMD has been downplayed to such an extent that one can be forgiven for forgetting that they were the main reason for going to war in Iraq. If you want a good laugh, go to google.com; type in «weapons of mass destruction» and press «I feel lucky». It summarises, to a tee, the farce that was and is «Operation Iraqi Perfection».

9/11 did change the world forever. It changed the way war is waged. It changed the way we perceive a «peace-time» world. I doubt that the Grand Bay explosion would have catalyzed such unabashed alarmism if our mass consciousness had not been so irreversibly traumatized by threats of indiscriminate terrorist attacks.

I’m not only speaking about the World Trade Centre catastrophe. No, it goes a lot deeper than that. It drills to the very core of how Western leaders and media have manipulated us to see danger behind every tree. Just like McCarthy’s communist witch-hunt in the 1950s US, when the population were ushered into an era of unadulterated paranoia where there was «a red under every bed». McCarthy was eventually discredited, of course, and died a sad death. It would be nice to see some members of the Bush administration follow the same path. We owe it to ourselves to keep informed and there are some great websites for this. Call me if you want an address or two.

Since that odd and fateful September day, terrorist attacks have indeed become more commonplace than ever. The perpetrators of these attacks cite American military unilateralism and support for Israel to justify their actions. The great majority of the victims of these attacks have not been American, although the violence was aimed at Western symbols. 2002 - Paradise Hotel in Mombasa, Kenya. 15 dead. Sheraton Hotel in Karachi Pakistan. 14 dead. Paddy’s Bar in Bali, Indonesia. 202 dead. 2003 – HSBC bank in Istanbul, Turkey. 30 dead. Various targets in Casablanca, Morocco. 33 dead. 2004 – Commuter trains in Madrid, Spain. 191 dead. And the year is far from over.

Watch out when you cross the road though. The chances that you will be run over by a Mauritian bus are infinitely higher than being caught in a terrorist attack.