One year ago, the world witnessed a unique kind of broadcasting
        - the mass  murder of thousands, live on television.

        As a lesson in the pitiless cruelty of the human race, September
        11 was up there with Pol Pot's mountain of skulls in Cambodia,
        or the skeletal bodies stacked like garbage in the Nazi
        concentration camps.  An unspeakable act so cruel, so calculated
        and so utterly merciless that surely the world could agree on
        one thing - nobody deserves this fate.  Surely there could be
        consensus: the victims were truly innocent, the perpetrators
        truly evil.

        But to the world's eternal shame, 9/11 is increasingly seen as
        America's comeuppance.

        Incredibly, anti-Americanism has increased over the last year.
        There has always been a simmering resentment to the USA in this
        country - too loud, too rich, too full of themselves and so much
        happier than Europeans - but it has become an epidemic.

        And it seems incredible to me. More than that, it turns my
        stomach.  America is this country's greatest friend and our
        staunchest ally. We are bonded to the US by culture, language
        and blood.

        A little over half a century ago, around half a million
        Americans died for our freedoms, as well as their own. Have we
        forgotten so soon?  And exactly a year ago, thousands of
        ordinary men, women and children - not just Americans, but from
        dozens of countries - were butchered by a small group of
        religious fanatics. Are we so quick to betray them?

        What touched the heart about those who died in the twin towers
        and on the planes was that we recognized them. Young fathers and
        mothers, somebody's son and somebody's daughter, husbands and
        wives. And children. Some unborn.

        And these people brought it on themselves? And their nation is
        to blame for their meticulously planned slaughter?

        These days you don't have to be some dust-encrusted nut job in
        Kabul or Karachi or Finsbury Park to see America as the Great
        Satan. The anti-American alliance is made up of self-loathing
        liberals who blame the Americans for every ill in the Third
        World, and conservatives suffering from power-envy, bitter that
        the world's only superpower can do what it likes without having
        to ask permission.

        The truth is that America has behaved with enormous restraint
        since September 11.

        Remember, remember.

        Remember the gut-wrenching tapes of weeping men phoning their
        wives to say, "I love you," before they were burned alive.
        Remember those people leaping to their deaths from the top of
        burning skyscrapers. Remember the hundreds of firemen buried
        alive. Remember the smiling face of that beautiful little girl
        who was on one of the planes with her mum.

        Remember, remember - and realize that America has never
        retaliated for 9/11 in anything like the way it could have.  So a
        few al-Qaeda tourists got locked without a trial in Camp X-ray?
        Pass the Kleenex.

        So some Afghan wedding receptions were shot up after they
        merrily fired their semi-automatics in a sky full of American
        planes? A shame, but maybe next time they should stick to
        confetti.

        AMERICA could have turned a large chunk of the world into a
        parking lot. That it didn't is a sign of strength.

        American voices are already being raised against attacking Iraq
        - that's what a democracy is for. How many in the Islamic world
        will have a minute's silence for the slaughtered innocents of
        9/11?

        How many Islamic leaders will have the guts to say that the mass
        murder of 9/11 was an abomination?
        When the news of 9/11 broke on the West Bank, those
        freedom-loving Palestinians were dancing in the street. America
        watched all of that - and didn't push the button. We should
        thank the stars that America is the most powerful nation in the
        world. I still find it incredible that 9/11 did not provoke
        all-out war. Not a "war on terrorism". A real war.

        The fundamentalist dudes are talking about "opening the gates of
        hell", if America attacks Iraq. Well, America could have opened
        the gates of hell like you wouldn't believe.

        The US is the most militarily powerful nation that ever strode
        the face of the earth.

        The campaign in Afghanistan may have been less than perfect and
        the planned war on Iraq may be misconceived.

        But don't blame America for not bringing peace and light to
        these wretched countries. How many democracies are there in the
        Middle East, or in the Muslim world? You can count them on the
        fingers of one hand - assuming you haven't had any chopped off
        for minor shoplifting.

        I love America, yet America is hated. I guess that makes me
        Bush's poodle. But I would rather be a dog in New York City than
        a Prince in Riyadh. Above all, America is hated because it is
        what every country wants to be - rich, free, strong, open,
        optimistic.

        Not ground down by the past, or religion, or some caste system.
        America is the best friend this country ever had and we should
        start remembering that. Or do you really think the USA is the
        root of all evil? Tell it to the loved ones of the men and women
        who leaped to their death from the burning towers.

        Tell it to the nursing mothers whose husbands died on one of the
        hijacked planes, or were ripped apart in a collapsing
        skyscraper.

        And tell it to the hundreds of young widows whose husbands
        worked for the New York Fire Department. To our shame, George
        Bush gets a worse press than Saddam Hussein.

        Once we were told that Saddam gassed the Kurds, tortured his own
        people and set up rape-camps in Kuwait. Now we are told he likes
        Quality Street. Save me the orange centre, oh mighty one!

        Remember, remember, September 11. One of the greatest atrocities
        in human history was committed against America. 

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