The United States cannot yet shake itself out of its mind-numbing terror one year ago today: that in 30 minutes, two commercial jetliners, hijacked, smashed into its citadels of financial and military power; and, if a third had not crashed in the fields of Pennsylvania, of a political nerve centre as well.

The World Trade Centre, the Pentagon, the White House represent the might of the US in this unilateral world it dominates.

That the attacks were unexpected sufficiently unnerved the US government to panic and divert Air Force One, in which President George W Bush was flying, while they scrambled to take stock.

One year later, we do not know who did it, though theories abound, often as "informed comment" or policy pronouncements from Washington. The shock on the US body politic is the worse, for it couches its continuing impotence in bravado and threats.

It went into Afghanistan in supreme confidence, certain only in its uncertainties, that untested military weaponry would smoke out the man the world now holds responsible for the carnage.

Osama bin Laden, the son of the Saudi billionaire, should be rooted out. He is in Afghanistan. So the US attacked Afghanistan, and got sucked deeper into the quagmire there.

Washington cannot now pull out of Afghanistan at will, nor can it afford to stay. Either option ensures only an inexhaustible toll of unacceptable body bags.

Facing reality

The news out of Afghanistan now reminds one of news out of Moscow of its adventure in this blessed land: the supreme confidence and belief it turned the corner enroute to civilisation for these 'barbarians'.

But this confidence and belief is inverse to ground reality. The Afghan regards the US as it once did the Soviet Union and, lest we forget, Britain: a foreign power that should be made to pay for daring to colonise it.

There is, in Afghan eyes, no difference between the Moscow-protected Babrak Karmal or Dr Najibullah, and the Washington-protected Hamid Karzai. When Washington recently took over the security of its Afghan protege, the battle was lost.

All Afghans now only need do is to force the US into a never-ending quagmire, as they did to Britain during the Great Game in the 19th and 20th centuries. The recent attempt on Hamid's life in Kandahar is but the first salvo. There will be more.

And a new enemy. With Mullah Omar and his Taliban disappearing into their tribal heartlands, the new enemy is its old friend, Gulbudeen Hekmatyar, building a new crusade against the new invader.

Euphemisms for the enemy

But not only in Afghanistan. In Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Central Asia, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, too.

In this war on terror, Washington uses euphemisms to describe Islam as an enemy. It has taken on a worldwide campaign to put the Muslim in his place, all because it believes those responsible for the carnage on Sept 11 were Muslim terrorists.

Washington takes the easy way out to decide who it must target. But it is selective. It attacked Afghanistan because a Saudi national from its base in that country allegedly orchestrated the Sept 11 attacks.

But Saudi Arabia, whose citizens figure prominently in Washington's list of undesirables, is not touched. And hides in a cocoon when a Rand Corporation researcher cites Saudi Arabia as a prime terrorist state.

But the truth is the US has no clue who did it and clueless about how to proceed. So it presents mind-numbing minutae after the fact, more to show the perfidy than how to counter this growing threat.

It acts in a vacuum, with no rational discussion to back it to challenge the mainstream Washington view in the year since, formed in talk shows and with punditry setting the pace for an attack against the unknown enemy.

Wallowing in impotence

The Bush presidency meanwhile turns the US into a nation that would make Third World dictators proud: the laws are amended so it would come close to what these satrapies practise in their bailiwick.

It is not surprising that Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad was cock-a-hoop that Washington at long last went the "civilising" road by adopting some of the more obnoxious provisions of the Internal Security Act.

Washington insists on setting itself as an example to the world. And it sets the clock back as it wallows in its impotence.

Washington still does not know who perpetrated the attack on its business, political and military centres. It assumes it is Osama's al-Qaeda ('base' in Arabic) network. Perhaps it is, perhaps it is not.

But if it is, it shows him to be a brilliant strategist, with a sense of the theatrical, who struck with strategic and tactical timing and chutzpah to put the US and its allies into rigor mortis .

Political shorthand

One year later, it is no different. The panic that it now reflects, frustrated at its impotence and threatening other countries to vent its anger, is no different now than it was on Sept 11. The underlying assumptions are as uncertain then as now. Which is why a case is built to attack Iraq.

As the war on terror stalls, the US must maintain the momentum. And Iraq is as good a target as any. The Arab League's opposition is proof yet again that Muslim nations now realise they are the targets because they are Muslim in this millennial crusade between Christianity and Islam.

But the greater damage is in the lands of its distant supporters, all on the bandwagon because of a distinct hatred or fear of Islam, or the opportunity it gives to rein in its political opponents, the more so if they are Muslim.

The war on terror has become a political shorthand to curtail, often harshly, the popular growth of its opponents.

Disastrous consequences

The US insists upon democracy, but not when Islamicists adopt it to achieve power. So it encourages all governments with Islamicist opponents to act harshly against them.

All it would do is to energise the Islamic movement, acting not in concert but in comfort that they do not fight alone, that other Islamic groups elsewhere find the same restriction, and find consolation in each other's frustrations.

It is this, more than anger at the US per se, that unites the Muslim nations. It is made worse because Washington's view of the Middle East is conditioned by its links with Israel.

What the US cannot shake from its psyche, is that this attack on Sept 11 shook it to its roots. The carnage was horrible, but no less than those killed in a routine earthquake in Iran.

Muslims bonded in their impotence, as the US rallied the world behind it in its impotence. Each reacts from its perspective, and this ensures more bravado and threats by both. It is this impotence that emerges clearly in the year since Sept 11.

When one reacts in impotence, the consequences can be disastrous. As now.