Nobody five months ago could possibly have foreseen the changes that were about to occur across the planet. This day last September, the world was aghast, stunned at the events of just two days before: for thousands of innocents were dead, and it seemed as if evil was both triumphant and unassailable in its Afghan fastness, writes Kevin Myers.
Had not earlier empires, most recently the Soviet, but before it the British and the Persian, dashed their brains out in attempts to subjugate the unsubjugable in those mountains? Now, 145 days later, President Bush has emerged as a truly great US leader, the Taleban has been overthrown, the al-Qaeda network in Afghanistan lies in ruins, its terrorist cells uncovered across the world, the government in Somalia - if that is not an oxymoron - has consented to US operations against Islamic fundamentalists in its territory, as indeed has Yemen; and meanwhile Russia is even closer to joining NATO in taking the war to international terrorism, this time in Iraq.
Much has changed
All incredible. And much more has changed since that day, and because of that day, not least the rules by which we govern, and the latitude we allow those who act on our behalf. These changes are not necessarily good changes: indeed, quite the reverse.
But we can no more undo the history that we have been given in the past five months and two days, than we can send back Hitler's panzers from the gates of Poland, or calm the Hapsburg's imperial rage that summer 88 years ago.
For since September 11th the hitherto unthinkable has been repeatedly thought. Can apparently nerveless young men hijack crowded airliners and send them crashing into skyscrapers, killing thousands? Can fascist-terrorists create secret global networks, with a view to achieving world-power? Can a tiny clique of homicidal lunatics seize control of a country and operate its institutions, unseen and unsuspected by the outside world? Can Europeans be recruited as kamikaze zealots for jihad and martyrdom in a holy crusade?
Yes to all these propositions, and the explanation why this is possible lies in the final paragraph of the foregoing sentence. Kamikaze is a Japanese word. Zealot is a Greek word to describe the Jews of Massada. Jihad is Arabic. Martyrdom is Greek. Crusade is Latin. All mean death about a holy purpose, and yet all do not. Kamikaze means "divine wind". Zealot comes from the Greek for "jealousy". Jihad simply means "effort". Martyr means "witness". Crusade merely means "of the cross". Behind these innocent words linger the enduring and repeated human appetite for laudable murder, for praiseworthy self-extinction, through cultures across the world. Such necrophilia is one of the most lethal yearnings to emerge in any society, for reason cannot cope with nor argument refute it.
Murderous nihilism
If the main purpose of life is seen to be the opportunity it provides to end itself, then no civilised value can co-exist with that purpose: compassion, forgiveness, charity, loyalty, duty, honour - all these are abolished by this culture of murderous nihilism.
No law has any value before such rampant suicidalism. We are in a fresh world, heralded by September 11th, wherein new rules are being made for us, whether we like it or not - rules in the conduct of conflict and of captivity, now and perhaps for all time.
Ask yourself a question you might have asked before September 11th, but must ask now. Since it is clear that one of the September 11th conspirators was in custody in the US long before the terrorist attacks, enjoying the lavish legal protection that that country allows suspects: Who now can genuinely declare that it was morally right for the US not to have suspended that suspect's rights so as to extract the truth from him, by hook or by crook? Who genuinely believes that it was better for some 3,000 people to have died terrible deaths than to have a terrorist suspect's rights - and, by extension, our own - suspended?
There are few comfortable questions in this dilemma, and absolutely no comfortable answers. Even for friends of the US, there must be some unease at what the US finds itself having to do, in Afghanistan now, and soon elsewhere.
Innocent victims
We know that US forces have accidentally killed innocent civilians: and even if this was largely because it was fighting a war for which it was doctrinally not fully prepared, the loss of innocent life on any scale is troubling.
Moreover, other fronts will probably soon open, and other mistakes will inevitably occur. Yet what choice is there? The rogue states named by President Bush - Libya, Syria, North Korea and Iran - have all, to some degree or other, been developing weapons of mass destruction for use against civilian targets. The US can't be expected to sit back and wait for another September 11th, in a different form, with an entirely unexpected group of innocent civilians as targets for terrorists who might well actually yearn to die alongside their victims.
The options facing the US are all dreadful, yet what other choices exist? The world has met evil in many forms before, but never in this insane combination. Aberrant but usually subconscious appetites have both been made conscious and then fused with a burning religious dementia: aided by a relatively easily accessible technology - a Boeing 757 is yours for the price of a few knives and a handful of martyrs - together they've made this world very dangerous indeed.
The choice is simple. The US or its enemies? One answer: us, writ large, of course.