As I write this, exactly two years have passed since the shattering events of 9/11. But while this brief period has seen much tension and turmoil, the war on terror is not going very well.
A few days after the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, who could have imagined that America would have so quickly lost the vast reserve of sympathy and grief that it received from all over the world?
Who would have believed that George Bush would so soon squander the goodwill and support that he and his administration enjoyed among ordinary people around the globe in the wake of the suicide attacks?
Even as American forces and their allies were bombing Afghans, causing considerable civilian casualties, criticism was muted as few people, even among the Muslim world, mourned the end of the Taliban. Die-hard pacifists like me agreed that Afghanistan had become a hub of terrorism, and that it was no bad thing that Mulla Omar, Osama bin Laden and their cohorts were being sorted out. Indeed, liberals in Pakistan hoped that this process would have a salutary effect on their own country, especially as Gen Musharraf needed little persuasion to join Bush's 'war on terror'.
But a few funny things happened on the way to the frontline in this new-style war. For starters, everybody jumped on the bandwagon, claiming that freedom struggles in their countries were in reality 'Islamic terrorism' linked to Al Qaeda, and therefore they needed American support and blessings to take a tougher line against these terrorists. Thus, Muslim separatists in Indonesia and Indian Kashmir, as well as Chechen and Palestinian freedom fighters, were all painted with the same Osama bin Laden brush, and a refusal to negotiate with them was condoned by the West.
True, many of these groups maintained links with each other as well as with Al Qaeda, but they all had different agendas.
The reality is that in an age of globalization, terrorism based on an ideology is bound to be an international phenomenon, just as the radical leftist terror groups of the seventies like the German Bader Meinhof, the Japanese Red Army Faction and the Italian Red Brigades maintained close links. But instead of trying to understand the linkages and address the core issues, Bush tried to simplify matters by focusing his country's rage and desire for revenge on a single easily identifiable target: Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
The American people are relatively easy to manipulate when it comes to foreign affairs because of their lack of interest in such matters. To this day, 70 per cent of them are convinced that somehow, Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks despite public admissions in London and Washington that there is no evidence to substantiate this charge.
This is not to say that there has been no political fallout from the unilateral war on Iraq: the absence of the elusive weapons of mass destruction as well as the rising cost in lives and money have all provided ammunition to Bush's opponents and his re-election is no longer the forgone conclusion it once seemed to be. With approval ratings down to around 50 per cent the American leader may soon discover - as his father did over a decade ago - that ultimately, the economy counts for more than foreign entanglements, especially if they cost the kind of money Iraq now threatens to do. Even for America, $87 billion is no small change.
Another major change has been in Bush's approach: he is now asking for help in his Iraq misadventure from the very UN he so openly derided barely six months ago. The French, Russians and Germans will extract a political price before they commit cash and troops. The present attitude is that since Bush created the mess, let him clean it up.
But the biggest revelation has been the political and military frailty of the world's sole superpower that has been laid bare by recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite its vaunted high-tech projection of power, the fact remains that ultimately, peace has to be won by troops on the ground where they are vulnerable to unsophisticated sniper attacks and landmines. Another fact to emerge is that to maintain the current troop level in Iraq (140,000) beyond next spring, the Pentagon would have to resort to conscription. In an election year, this is clearly not an option for Bush.
A further myth to bite the dust is the neo-conservative view that victory in Iraq would lead to a 'domino effect' in the Middle East which would see the crumbling of the dictatorships and monarchies in the region. These would be replaced by modern democracies more amenable to American and Israeli domination of the region. These changes would also lead to the acceptance of Israel and end Arab resistance to its hegemony over the occupied territories. Currently, with its plans for Iraq in tatters, the coalition would do well to stabilize the war-ravaged country before it can hold it up as a shining example of democracy.
When Geoffery Hoon, the British defence secretary, was questioned on the BBC recently about the government's decision to reinforce British troops in Iraq, he replied that this was inevitable because as water and power were brought back, more troops were needed to guard this infrastructure from attack. If this logic is followed across Iraq, we are in for some major beefing up of troop levels. And yet the Americans are not going to send more soldiers, and without a UN mandate, nor is anybody else.
These events mark the limits of unilateralism: even the mighty United States cannot go it alone, no matter how distasteful the alternative of taking the rest of the world with it. The constraints are both internal and external. Nationally, the American people are reluctant to see their soldiers bogged down and take casualties over a period of time. While they enjoy war as a spectacle and an affirmation of their country's strength, they will only support a long-term commitment if their own security is directly threatened. In this case, it is increasingly apparent that the whole WMD issue was hyped up by Bush and Blair. Internationally, most governments are reluctant to being told they are redundant to decision-making on global matters and should merely rubber-stamp Washington's diktat.
If future American rulers draw the appropriate lessons from 9/11 and its aftermath, perhaps all the bloodshed over the last two years will not have been in vain.