Connect: Monday will be the fifth anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington. Five years is longer than the duration of the first World War and almost as long as that of the second World War. In fact, the US has already spent about the same period engaged in its War on Terror as it did in those global conflicts combined.
When the planes hit New York's World Trade Center it was clear the world would change.
The nature of that change remained uncertain but killing almost 3,000 people in the world's sole superpower guaranteed a response. Conspiracy theories about the attacks - some intriguing, others daft - have since surfaced. But whatever the truth behind the devastation, change was assured.
The reason for many conspiracy theories has been George Bush and his supporters benefiting politically - at least, ostensibly. Crime seeks motives and results and the reported motive of jihadists attacking US commercial and military symbols was convincing. But the result of their doing so was not. Bush and the gang needed to act in certain ways to be in Muslim interests.
It may be that the US has fallen into a carefully laid trap. Who knows? Certainly nothing angers critics more than the belief that Bush and his cabal exploited the attacks of September 11th, 2001, to implement long-laid plans to remove Saddam Hussein.
Perhaps Osama bin Laden was able to predict the Bush response. Then again, maybe he's a gambler. But the US reaction to the attacks has been to make the world more, not less, threatening. After all, according to even the official narrative, 15 of the alleged 19 hijackers were, like bin Laden, from Saudi Arabia. Yet, in response, the US (and Britain) invaded Iraq, which had nothing to do with the attack on the World Trade Center. As it did so, the US media acted for the most part like cheerleaders.
So too did elements of the Irish media. Of all outcomes of the past five years, the capitulation of almost all American media and sections of its European counterpart has, apart from the slaughter itself, arguably been the worst. The problem has been the blatant lies - not simply glossed-up "spinning" - told by Bush, Tony Blair and the other warmongers.
There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush and Blair had been told as much by the United Nations weapons inspectors. Yet they insisted on lying to the electorates who had voted for them and promised - though "threatened" sounds more accurate - to export similar "democratic" systems to the Middle East. Propaganda is perhaps unavoidable; lying is certainly not.
That has been the great difficulty of the past five years. We have all - sensible people anyway - lost trust in the leaderships of the US and Britain. It's been impossible not to because these leaders did not just massage data or convey lies of omission. They made up so much and frightened so many people that it's right to distrust them.
It's not true that in voicing concern about the roles of the US and British governments, critics lend support to Islamic fascists. You can, after all, condemn Arthur "Bomber" Harris's destruction of Dresden without endorsing the Nazis. It's likewise with totalitarian Islamic rule and very few Westerners want to be told what to think by some mullah or other.
But we do not want to be told what to think by lying Western politicians either. Who do these people think they are? Sure they've got big jobs - president of the US and prime minister of Britain, for instance, are serious responsibilities - but who the hell do they think they are that they should so blatantly lie to us over tens of thousands of lives and deaths? If that constitutes "democratic" politics (it doesn't, it's a travesty of the ideas underpinning them) why should even the most secular Muslims want to have anything to do with them?
Is it because they, in turn, can be lied to once they've seen the backwardness of their current political systems and turned to "democracy"?
The immediate result of the attacks on the US was a surge in national unity. The country draped itself in national flags. Wal-Mart sold 116,000 of them on September 11th, 2001, and 250,000 the following day. George Bush benefited politically - hence the glut of conspiracy theories - and his ratings shot up from the low 50s to the 90s.
Since then they've dipped into the 30s. Five years ago, Americans did not wish to be seen as anything but patriotic. Millions of people have done materially well from the country and then felt they owe it. Now, however, largely thanks to the US government's lying, all but the most bullish and ignorant American identities have been undermined.
Sean Wilentz, a Princeton University historian, has written in Rolling Stone magazine that George W Bush may well be the worst president in US history. I don't know enough US history to agree or disagree. I do know, however, that Bush, Blair and the rest of the cabal have told outrageous and lethal lies to further their distorted agenda. Shame on them.