"The resources of civilisation are not yet exhausted", Prime Minister Gladstone after the Phoenix Park murders in Dublin, 1881

Many people love recalling where they were during traumatic events such as the assassination of Jack Kennedy. This is not normally my line. But the circumstances in which I learned of the outrage of September 11 were rather special.

I was in hospital recovering from a non-threatening, but painful, operation. In many hotels and hospitals radio stations can only be obtained - at least by the electronically unskillful - by first turning on a television channel and then pressing a few buttons.

It so happened that I was onto a television channel en route between two radio stations. Instead of showing the usual rubbish, we saw the World Trade Center on fire, followed by the collapse of the first tower. Maybe this huge atrocity ought to have put my own pain into perspective. But I am no hero. They continued side by side.

Predictably some commentator soon intoned that the world would never be the same again. My own reaction was 'you bet'. It did not take many minutes before every interest and single-issue pressure group was trying to turn the tragedy to its own advantage.

Even economics commentator have been affected. One whose most intense passions relate to demand management first urged reasonably enough the case for a worldwide monetary stimulus, but then worked himself up into a fury against the European Central Bank, which he thought might resist this, and virtually advocated a posse from European governments to force the ECB's hand. In fact the ECB acted on its own and can live again, at least until the same school of thought starts shouting that it has not yet done enough. Other more political economists could not make up their minds whether to blame everything on globalisation or predict the final demise of the latter.

To return to serious matters. A few people vaguely remembered that I was opposed to the Falklands War of 1982, or that I am now against arms sales to dubious regimes, some of which have almost certainly ended up in Taliban hands. They were surprised by my hawkish reactions. But September 11 2001 was not the Falklands. It was more like Pearl Harbour.

Yet it has not taken long for the appeasers to come out of the woodwork. Instead of discussing how to combat the terrorist scourge commentators - and even friends of mine - were asking Why do so many people hate America? There is in fact little evidence that they really do. The hatred comes from religious and political zealots. These hate the US because it is both free and rich.

It so happens I feel far more at home in a central European konditorei than in a hamburger bar in middle America where there is complete incomprehension between myself and the barman shouting something like sunny side up! But that is not the point. The book I would be reading in the konditorei would be highly likely to originate in America.

The US is the most successful society the world has seen. The success is based on its material wealth, but is far from confined to business. If you are looking for the best scholarship on the English classical writer Jane Austen you go to a university in Texas. If you want the best studies of the Austro-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein you will find them in North America. Indeed if you are looking for serious analysis in any of the humanities, rather than sub-Marxist rhetoric you will often go to American-based authors.

But none of this was of any interest to commentators who claimed that the roots of the hatred was something called American backing of Israel. Did they mean that the US was not putting enough pressure on the hardline Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon to make concessions for peace? Bush can, should and will take care of Sharon. Or did they support those fanatics who wanted to roll back 50 years of history and wipe out the state of Israel altogether? They neither knew or cared. Palestine as an idiot headline would take them through the next few programmes.

One person who nearly ended my recovery was Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestine Arab spokesperson. She appears highly westernised and it is easy to imagine having lemon tea and cakes with her, as one might with a Bessarabian Jewish aunt. But I happened to catch her on the screen a couple of days after the atrocity. After a few words of ritual condemnation she went on relentlessly with the Palestinian-Arab line. I wanted to say to her For goodness sake, auntie, several thousand innocent people have been killed. Can you not just for once in your life not mention the Palestine conflict and simply express sorrow and condemnation for what has occurred?

She might not like to learn this, but her relentless and predictable line resembles nothing more than the non-stop Zionist propaganda which turned off so many visitors to Israel in the last few decades (See for instance the chapter Jerusalem,1982 in Sebastian Faulks Fools Paradise) .

I suppose I will be accused of being a racialist if I say that there are too many attempts to explain Islamic attitudes. The vast majority of Moslems, whether Arab or not, simply, want to get on with their lives and use their mobiles and IT skills in a way I can only admire. It looks as if the United States and Britain will avoid the crass error of the early years of World War Two when residents of German or Japanese origin were interned. Thugs who use the September 11 events as an excuse for attacking Afghan cab drivers - probably themselves refugees from the Taliban - are just like the football hooligans or the discreditable wing of the anti-globalisation protesters who are simply looking for a rough house. They need to be treated with the full rigour of the law.

But can you imagine Winston Churchill in 1940 stopping preparations for the Battle of Britain until he felt he understood enough of the origins of the hostility of the German-speaking world to the west or of the appeal of Nazism to Germany and Austria or of Fascism to Italy?. Does anyone think that he should have called off the war until he and his advisers had made a thorough study of German idealistic philosophy and how easily it became perverted, or of Wagner's anti-Semitism or the cult of duelling in German universities. Indeed a spate of studies has come out on all these aspects, many of them of course written in the US, which started late in World War 2 and continues to this day.

If somebody wants to blow you up, the most important thing is not to empathise with the combination of heredity and environment which has produced his attitudes but to do what we can to eliminate him .

I question either the urgent need to understand Islam or the accusation that the west has never tried to do so. The foreign offices of Europe have not ceased poking their noses into Middle Eastern affairs for the last 200 years with disastrous results.

At this point of danger we cannot be too squeamish in our choice of allies. But for goodness sake let us remember that such alliances are based on ephemeral self interest. General de Gaulle once wrote that countries have no permanent allies, only interests. Leaving aside the personification of countries - an unfortunate side product of the European romantic tradition - the General was right.

One of the most astonishing examples of prevailing softness towards Islamic inciters to murder is the reluctance of an avowedly law and order Home Secretary such as David Blunkett to bring charges against self-styled Arab leaders who preach a holy war. No doubt he was advised that he might alienate moderate Moslem. I suspect that such moderates, if they felt free to speak would be delighted to see such leaders deported or behind bars.

Of course it is not only the appeasing left or the arabists, who are using the tragedy for their purpose. There are elements in the Home Office and in the police who have always wanted identity cards, and who are using the crisis despite a lack of evidence that such cards would do anything worthwhile. And let us hear no more clichés such as We will never completely root out terrorism as if that were an excuse for inaction.

It should not have taken this crisis to teach us the harmfulness of the saying: My enemy’s enemy is my friend. As a piece of formal logic it is simply wrong and deserves a delta mark. In practice the Taliban would not be there if US administrations had not backed them to fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. How many times do we need to heed the warning of the great 19th century liberal statesman Richard Cobden about the lack of knowledge with which we interfere in the affairs of other countries. The Afghans should have been left to deal with the Soviet army as indeed they did.

#When Hitler invaded Russia in 1941, Churchill said that as a lifelong opponent of communism, he would ally himself with the devil himself against Hitler. But it was not long before British sentimentalism took over and the mass murderer Stalin became Uncle Joe and schoolchildren were contributing to Mrs Churchill’s Aid to Russia fund.

Of course, a network of alliances now needs to be constructed. But there is no need for clerks in the Foreign Office or the Quai d'Orsay to write hymns of praise to regimes which practice amputations and floggings and refuse to recognise the humanity of their female citizens. A novice UK foreign secretary ought to have known better than to allow some Foreign Office Arabist to draft a one-sided anti-Israel article for an Iranian newspaper in a pathetic attempt to curry favour with that country’s rulers. Like most others, the Iranian regime will co-operate with the west to the extent that it pays it to do so.

Meanwhile, the best that the ordinary citizen can do, especially if we are in for the long haul, is to doggedly pursue normal activities. It is often forgotten that after an early phase of general shutdown during World War Two, theatres, cinemas, concert halls and the like were encouraged to reopen; and the civilian population encouraged to think of non-war activities. We shall indeed overcome.