MOST OF the rest of the world yesterday joined the people of the United States (U.S.) in remembrance of 9/11, the fifth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by al-Qaida terrorists.

Most people can remember exactly what they were doing at the time they heard the news and what were their first thoughts and actions. These attacks were seen by the bulk of humankind as indecent and of no redemptive value or quality. The U.S. occupied the clear moral high ground.

Decent people around the world, we believe, remain no less outraged and angered by the despicable act of bin Laden's acolytes. But five years on the people of the U.S. are left to ponder the growing international ambivalence towards post-9/11 America after what the country's former president, Bill Clinton, yesterday rightly identified as "an astonishing moment of unity in America and around the world."

Mr. Clinton, and the more perceptive observers in the U.S., understand that something has gone badly awry - and not for the reasons that too many Americans simplistically assume. It is not because people hate the U.S. or envy its wealth or way of life. Indeed, most people deeply respect the U.S. They admire its democracy. They wish America's technology and wealth for their countries without hoping for a diminution of the U.S.

Distinction between support and respect

But even good and loyal friends of the U.S., such as Jamaica, make a distinction between support and respect for the U.S. and blind loyalty in the face of obdurate policy. Which, to most of the world, is what the U.S. has engaged in post-9/11.

Or, as Helen Clark, the New Zealand Prime Minister, suggested yesterday, the U.S. administration squandered the moral high ground it so firmly occupied in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks with its unfocused 'war on terrorism'.

All were agreed with the move into Afghanistan to remove the Taliban who had sheltered bin Laden and al-Qaida. But 9/11 provided a platform for the ideologues of the new U.S. administration to roll out the policy of pre-emptive strike. The lines, deliberately or otherwise, were blurred between the al-Qaida terrorists and Saddam Hussein, who may have been a despot, but who had nothing to do with 9/11 and did not possess the claimed weapons of mass destruction. Yet, Iraq was invaded and the Americans have found themselves in a military quagmire there.

So Helen Clark concludes: " ... We're not more secure since 9/11 ... Iraq was not a haven for terrorists prior to the war there. It certainly is now."

We agree with Vice-President Dick Cheney that America should neither ignore nor appease "history's latest gang of fanatics trying to murder their way to power." However, America runs the risk of alienating its friends and allies if it does not tread carefully to avoid trampling those who wish it well or if it engages in a foreign policy that provides a fertile recruiting ground for the purveyors of hate. Its Palestinian policy and its responses to the recent Israel/Hezbollah-Lebanese war are cases in point.

Indeed, the growing division in the U.S. over 9/11 should be heeded by those who formulate policy in Washington.

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