Many people at the time attributed the attacks, which killed almost 3,000 people - including nearly a dozen Guyanese, to the freedom and democracy that characterize America. Others, mostly religious people, saw it as a prophetic sign that the world was in the throes of end-time chaos.

A little more than two decades earlier, noted American economist Robert L. Heilbroner took a pessimistic view of mankind’s chances of civilized survival when he called attention to the dangers of unlimited growth for the world’s physical environment and the social order.

In An Inquiry Into The Human Prospect, Dr. Heilbroner asked whether industrialized democracies had to become authoritarian in order to slow economic growth! He’d anticipated, at the pace at which those economies were advancing, that Americans, Europeans and Asians would have too much going for them and that chaos would follow.

That hasn’t happened. In fact, the economies of the developed countries are so prone to slow growth, zero growth and recession that they frequently impose harsh conditions on emerging societies to discourage growth in those societies and to keep a firm grip on the world economy.

Depending on one’s ideology or core belief system, one may agree or disagree with how and why developing countries like Guyana react to policies in the North. But as President Jagdeo declared at yesterday’s news conference, our national interest dictates that we forge and maintain close links with the United States.

This is something all Guyanese need to understand, appreciate and support. We’ve always said that we can, by the destiny we’ve chosen, determine where this country goes from here.

We’ve gone through too much not to want to support policies designed to move our country forward.

As a nation whose survival depends on domestic output and international cooperation and assistance, we dare not sit on our laurels and allow a sense of unease and foreboding to overtake us.

We have to address the source of people’s pessimism and lack of attitudinal changes by those who see government as foe, by those whose interests won’t allow them to factor rationality and the public interest into their work, and by those government functionaries who are bent on using the instruments of power to fester inequalities between and among Guyanese.

The President had a word for all of them when he spoke with journalists yesterday. We need to see our individual roles in a national context, work together and do our best as a nation if we ever want to put Guyana in the upper crust of the development ladder.

Government has reiterated that it intends to implement innovative strategies to tap our richly endowed natural resources, turn current account deficits into surpluses, attract more direct foreign investments, and increase the country’s international competitiveness.