Any misguided fool who attempts a dispassionate answer, in the eyes of the hawks setting the agenda, is anti-American, anti-capitalist, pro-terrorist, and an appeaser.That the American way might not be quite so perfectly geared to the ways of others is still not something the vast majority of US citizens want to hear In this important way, the world has not changed. There's much to be said for the view that until such self-examination starts to happen, the world cannot change so very much either. However, the actions of the suicide bombers have made it more difficult for such an assessment to take place, as it would be seen by many as "giving in" to the terrorist agenda. It wouldn't, but nevertheless, in this and other respects, 11 September has made the world less likely to change.That the world has not changed, is confirmed also in the fact that the US feels such an urgent need now to change it.

So keen is the US to change the world, that it is willing to go to war for the second time in a year. Paradoxically though, it is this very activity that is cited as the great shift that has been wrought in the past 12 months. Before 11 September, goes the argument, the US did not have much in the way of a foreign policy Now, the US does.Nonsense America did have foreign policies before. It's just that they were mainly based on the idea that the most odious of self-appointed leaders could be controlled simply by the promise of US friendship (and plenty still are). The US has had fascinating dealings with Saddam Hussein, going back many decades, just as it had been involved with the fate of Afghanistan long before 11 September 2001.

The present situation, in both countries, is not unconnected to US involvement in the past.The focus on Iraq right now, is due as much to the feeling that there is long-running, unfinished, business between the two countries, as it is to careful consideration of exactly which regime is the most evil on the planet. Ask any dissenter from the view of the US as the world's knight in shining armour what really gets up their nose about America, and they'll point out the many shameful, hypocritical contradictions in America's foreign dealings.Not that the attitudes of other countries to the US aren't just as shameful and contradictory. A young Turkish woman recently explained to me that while the Turks dislike their neighbour, Saddam Hussein, they also despise the Americans. When asked whether her country feared Saddam, though, she replied that it did not, because it was fairly certain that in the event of trouble, the US would sort matters out. In this respect, the US is in a terrible situation, resented and relied on in equal measure. Likewise, I've heard again and again the complaint that Tony Blair should not align himself with George Bush so strongly, because in doing so he's making London a bigger terrorist target than it would otherwise be. I don't, I'm afraid, find this to be a particularly edifying argument.