The response may have been over-exuberance or indeed racial profiling, but one thing is certain: life in the United States would never be the same. The terrorists were apparently driven by a desire to strike America where it hurts most in retaliation for what they saw as anti-Muslim policies.

How wrong they were by believing that their actions would persuade America to change its policies. It was a tragic miscalculation. Rather than change, American attitudes towards suspected terrorist states, have only hardened.

We only have to look at its own domestic policies to gauge the extent to which the United States has changed course. The Republican Party right has now been given a free rein to press ahead with its agenda with hardly any opposition from the now timid Democrats.

It is now the norm that to question the Bush administration’s policies or its moves to increase security at the cost of civil liberties is to be considered un-American and unpatriotic. The innocent belief of millions of immigrants in America that they have been accepted by the host society has been shaken.

On the international front, September 11 has provided an opportunity to the United States to extend the scope of its foreign engagements to an unprecedented level. It also facilitated its war-and-oil lobby.

As a result, the United States has a foothold not merely in countries that have always been sympathetic to its interest, but for the first time in states like Uzbekistan. It has also moved swiftly to expand its sphere of influence across the globe and blunted the influence of Russia, which is now little more than a paper tiger, in world affairs.

Part of this patriotic fervour may be seen in the new attempt by the United States Congress to stem the flow of companies incorporating in offshore countries like Barbados to reduce the incidence of taxation; with ominous implications for us.

It passed a new Homeland Security Act that provides that no company incorporated in offshore locations could receive contracts from this new department.

So pervasive is the effect of September 11 that we need to pay particular attention to this development. Signs of a fight-back against the Bush administration’s excesses are beginning to emerge, but they are still obscured by irrational patriotism.

Though war seems likely, what the world needs now is a coalition for peace to address the problems of poverty, AIDS, underdevelopment and ways to boost trade. Not a coalition to wage war.