The streets around Ground Zero have re-opened. The local cinemas and diners are back in business and the roller-bladers and cyclists have long since returned to Battery Park. Life goes on. But most Americans have probably still not come to terms with September 11th, writes eyewitness Conor O'Clery from his office in Manhattan.
Many certainties have been eroded since September 11th. The people of the US, founded as a refuge from the conflicts of the Old World and possessing the most formidable armed force in history, have lost faith in the nation's invulnerability to attack by a foreign enemy.
They no longer trust the intelligence services. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has become a laughing stock. People feel insecure. Parents don't take their kids to the Empire State Building in case it becomes a target. People hurry through busy railway terminals, at the back of their mind the thought of a dirty bomb, or a new case of anthrax. Anything is possible.
Americans have experienced an annus horribilis that marked the end of an era of prosperity and complacency, a terrible year when the stock market dived and major corporations collapsed and people lost faith in former national icons who fell from grace, from CEOs to baseball players and priests. The new popular heroes are those who save lives - the firemen and police and members of the rescue services.
"The September 11th 2001 attacks and the killing of thousands of innocent people is a watershed date that marks the end of an era and the beginning of a different and dangerous world," said the American Forum for Global Education, in a publication entitled Terrorism: What Every Teacher Should Know. "Global issues," it said, "have become more personalised than ever before." For most Americans, there was only one global issue after September 11th, and that was to go after the terrorists. The desire for revenge was palpable . . .
Television made everyone an eye-witness to mass murder in real time. The shock was felt collectively, instantaneously, and most keenly by those closest to the carnage. High levels of stress were reported across the nation. Half a million New Yorkers still exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, three times the national average, according to the American Medical Association, which is studying the psychological aftermath of September 11th.
The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) is particularly concerned about the effect of the renewed focus on violent death and grief this coming week on America's school children.
September 11th is the most formative experience of their generation. Teachers should be prepared for a resurfacing of emotions in the next few days, the NASP warned in a special advisory for schools. Some students "will re-experience feelings of anxiety, fear, anger or grief like those felt a year ago". They should not be made to attend memorial services. It was also important "to reassure students that they are safe".
Such reassurances are difficult to make convincingly in today's fragile America. A year on, the flags are still on display. The country has unfinished business. It is still at war.
President George W. Bush did not have to make the case to the American people for a war on al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Nor did President Bush's administration have much difficulty convincing Americans of the need for extra vigilance at home. The US is on constant security alert. A Department of Homeland Security has been created. Armed National Guardsmen patrol airport terminals. Passengers are asked to remove their shoes for security checks. Government offices and high buildings have been equipped with metal detectors and security barriers. Many underground car-parks have been closed. Schools have relaxed a ban on mobile phones so parents can be in touch in an emergency. Cold War-era Geiger counters have been sent by fire chiefs to New Jersey for recalibration.
The Bush administration set itself two main goals: to catch the perpetrators and to crush their organisation. It took many controversial measures in the domestic war against terrorism. Attorney General John Ashcroft propelled the Patriot Act through Congress, permitting wire-taps on conversations between lawyers and clients accused on terrorism charges. Plans for military tribunals which have powers to impose the death sentence were announced. Over 1,200 people were caught in a nationwide dragnet on immigration charges, and some 750 were held for many months without trial.
Most have been deported, charged with some offence or released, but some 100 remain in custody to this day. Two US citizens have been designated "enemy combatants" and are being held indefinitely on a naval brig without trial.
While, for the US, the war went well in Afghanistan, at home success proved more elusive. Only one detainee, Zacarias Moussaoui, has been formally charged as a September 11th conspirator. No network of terrorists has been found.
President Bush declared, on November 29th: "We must not let foreign enemies use the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself." Yet, a growing number from both parties in Congress charge him with assuming powers not granted to the president by the constitution. As the shock of the attacks receded, the administration found itself on the defensive.
The most embarrassing setback came two weeks ago. It involved the Justice Department's policy, rushed through in a directive on September 21st, that in the interests of national security, all immigration hearings involving terrorist suspects would be closed to the press and the public, including family and lawyers.
One suspect detained was Michigan cleric, Rabih Haddad, who helped found Global Relief Foundation, an Islamic charity the Justice Department said was suspected of links with terrorists. Haddad had apparently overstayed a tourist visa.
Since December 14th, he has been detained without bail. During this time, three deportation hearings were held in secret, despite court rulings obtained by Democratic Congressman John Conyers and four newspaper editors that the restrictions were unconstitutional.
On August 26th, a three-judge federal appeals court ruled that the press and public had a constitutional "right of access" to such hearings under the First Amendment to the Constitution. Senior Judge Damon J. Keith accused the Executive Branch of seeking to uproot people's lives behind a closed door. "Democracy dies behind closed doors," he said. Civil libertarians proclaimed Judge Keith as another new American hero.
The Haddad case, now being appealed to the Supreme Court - which tends to favour administrations in time of war - has become a test for the First Amendment in post-September 11th America.
The debate over the civil liberties aspect of anti-terrorism policy remains muted, however. It is not a populist cause. In a June Gallup poll, only 11 per cent of those surveyed felt the administration had gone too far in restricting civil liberties. Nearly half of all Americans today think the constitutional amendment on free speech goes too far in the rights it guarantees, according to a survey commissioned by the First Amendment Centre in Arlington, Virginia. "Many Americans view these fundamental freedoms as possible obstacles in the war on terrorism," said the centre's executive director, Ken Paulson. Significantly, almost half those questioned said the government should have more authority to monitor Muslims.
The issue of civil liberties is a pressing one for America's three million Muslims. The slightest problem with documentation can mean incarceration or deportation. School children of Middle Eastern origin have encountered abuse and beatings. The National Council for Social Studies created a lesson about "Osama", a boy whose parents had emigrated to the US from Iraq and who is harassed at school because of his name.
Arab-American comedians have tried, with some success, to draw the poison of racism through the same type of self-deprecating vaudeville humour that once helped the Jewish community through similar difficulties. Egyptian-American comic Ahmed Ahmed always gets a laugh when he tells audiences: "I went to the airport. I got to the check-in and the guy said. 'Are these your bags, sir?'. I said 'Yes'. He said, 'Did you pack them yourself?'. I said, 'Yes'. Then they arrested me."
Some have tried reaching out to Muslims, and found themselves in hot water. The University of North Carolina, in a well-intentioned effort to create greater understanding, asked undergraduates to read Approaching the Qur'án, the Early Revelations, a collection of quotations annotated by Haverford professor Michael Sells. The decision incurred the wrath of the Christian right and conservative commentators, such as Bill O'Reilly on the Fox TV channel, who compared it to making students read Hitler's Mein Kampf in 1941. Other critics pointed out that the compilation omitted verses used to justify holy war.
The episode underlined the extent of the challenge facing America as it seeks to understand the world after September 11th. For a year the nation has been at war. But it has been an inconclusive war. The enemy has been routed but not extinguished. US soldiers hunt shadows. No one knows if Osama Bin Laden is a dead man. Al-Qaeda's forces have scattered but may have access to weapons of mass destruction.
The last major battle in Afghanistan was fought in March, and the 7,800 US soldiers deployed there face an increasingly hostile environment. Talk in Washington of a Marshall Plan to help rebuild Afghanistan has fizzled out.
The unity of purpose in the months after September 11th has dissipated in Congress, in the Republican Party, in the administration, and even in the Bush family, as the White House squares up to invade Iraq, part of what President Bush called an "axis of evil". "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists," said Bush after the attacks. A year later, a struggle of Shakespearean proportions has developed between the president and his father, former President George H. W. Bush, who is not with him on Iraq. The former president, who defeated Saddam Hussein in 1991 but failed to achieve "regime change", has remained silent, while Brent Scowcroft, James Baker and Larry Eagleburger, former members of his administration, publicly urge caution and delay on his behalf.
This time, President George W. Bush will have to make a case for war. Just after September 11th the US could have got massive support for an attack on Iraq. Support was running at 74 per cent three months ago. It has slipped to 53 per cent as critics look at the dangers to American national security of an implosion in the Middle East, and the prospect of staying in Iraq for up to 10 years and of alienating the whole world.
At a time when the US needs allies it has become more isolationist and unilateralist than at any time in recent history. It sidelines the United Nations, indulges in protectionism, rejects the International Criminal Court, tears up international treaties. It can do all this because it has evolved since the Cold War into a hyper-power, not just a superpower. It wanted a regime change in Afghanistan and got it within weeks and the world applauded.
The hardliners around the President say the western allies will rally round again when the fighting starts in Iraq.
September 11th showed the US to be like Achilles, mighty but vulnerable. On the first anniversary of September 11th, the US is preparing to deploy its destructive wrath on a new set of perceived evildoers. Ordinary Americans can only hope that meantime the other shoe will not drop, and that the enemy has lost the ability to make such a deadly strike a second time on American soil.
Around Ground Zero, life has almost returned to normal. The debris has been cleared away, though three coin-sized human bones were found on a rooftop just two weeks ago. We still don't know the exact number of people who died: the final toll will probably be less than 2,800.
The streets around have been re-opened. The asbestos-contaminated cinema has been cleaned and is showing movies again. The Gee Whiz Diner and Lili's Noodle Shop have re-opened. Century 21 is doing a roaring trade. The roller-bladers and cyclists have long since returned to Battery Park.
Life goes on. The tourists still come to peer into the 16-acre pit, treating it as hallowed ground, as central to the nation's sense of history now as Gettysburg. Then they go back uptown and get on with enjoying New York, still the world's most vibrant city, the epicentre of excellence in so many things.