Five years on.

As Bush lays a wreath at the spot where 3,000 innocent Americans fell, all of our minds recede to where we were 5 years ago when this dreadful atrocity took place.

I was in my kitchen having coffee with two friends when the phone rang. "Turn on your TV" the voice said. "What channel?" I replied. My friend on the other end of the line said simply, "Any channel."

No matter where you were that day, the world literally stopped. It seemed that for the next two or three days all I did was channel hop from CNN to Sky News and back to the BBC.

I remember thinking that this was war. Whatever nation or group who had done this dreadful thing would surely face the wrath of the whole world as well as the US. It's hard to remember 5 years later that it would not be until the next day that any of us would hear of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Shortly after this Bush announced his War on Terror. I remember at the time thinking that this was an incredibly stupid thing to do. You cannot declare war on a tactic any more than you can declare war on an active noun. How do you define success? Where is the equivalent Port Stanley where you can plant your flag and pronounce victory? Why would a US President declare war against a tactic? Why not simply declare war against al Qaeda, the terrorist group who had - we were told - carried out this atrocity?

We now know that they chose to announce war against an active noun for the very reason that they did not simply want to root out al Qaeda. They wanted, in Rumsfeld's words, "To sweep it all up, things related - and not".

Many in the administration saw this as the chance they had been waiting for. Indeed, it is well documented that Wolfowitz and others were calling for attacks on Iraq even before the US attacked Afghanistan.

So five years on, with 72,000 innocent civilians dead, and with almost no tangible results for this bloodbath, I find it extraordinary that Bush continues to be allowed to play 9-11 as something that will help the Republicans in the forthcoming mid-terms.

For what have his achievements been? Whilst it is true that the Taliban have been removed from Afghanistan, one should never forget that the removal of the Taliban was not the primary aim of the war. Indeed, the Taliban were offered the chance to remain in power if they would only hand over bin Laden. It was only when the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden without the US providing evidence of his guilt, evidence that we now discover that the US has simply never possessed, that the Taliban became an American target.

Indeed, it was only after bin Laden escaped at Tora Bora that the Republicans started claiming the removal of the Taliban as a victory in the War on Terror as a way of covering up the loss of their initial target: bin Laden.

The neo-con machine then moved towards the target they had long salivated over: Iraq. The tissue of lies and the misrepresentations of facts that were used to justify that war will keep historians busy for decades. To this day people like Dick Cheney continue to try to insist that there were links between al Qaeda and Iraq, or that - at the very least - the links were believed to be true at the time.

So with Iraq teetering on the brink of civil war - I'm being polite here as it already seems to me to be in a full scale civil war - and with the Taliban proving resurgent in Afghanistan, what is the great victory of the War on Terror that makes Bush feel wrapping himself up in it will help his party in the mid-terms?

Rich Lowry sums it up best:

While the smoke was still clearing from downtown Manhattan, no one would have said that the fight against terror should be judged on whether the U.S. is popular abroad or able to spread democracy. The standard was avoiding another attack in the U.S., and by that standard, the war on terror is a tentative success.

However, even as he defines it's success, one realises that he's employing a circular argument. He justifies the War on Terror based on the fact that no further attack has taken place. However, had another attack taken place this would only be further proof for the need for the War on Terror. See how it works? It's Catch 22.

Five years ago today, 3,000 Americans died. Since then the US and her allies have killed 72,000 innocent civilians. And yet, astonishingly, five years on from that terrible tragedy not only has bin Laden never been captured, but "the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”

I'm left thinking that the war aims were left deliberately vague precisely in order to make definitions such as success and failure almost impossible. Indeed, what we now have is the perpetual war that Cheney dreamt of, where the US can act unilaterally and claim any action it takes is somehow part of the larger War on Terror. Things related and not.

It would be nice to think that the deaths of 3,000 American citizens slaughtered five years ago today were used as something more noble than as a justification for pre-existing neo-con plans for world domination.

Sadly not. And the real tragedy is that Bush and his cronies appear to be getting away with it.

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Tags: 9/11, anniversary, al Qaeda, Bush, bin Laden, War on Terror, terrorism,