I love the excess of Christmas. The shopping season that begins in September the bad pop star recordings of Christmas carols the decorations that don't know when to come down.

Imagine a September 11 with weapons of mass destruction. It's not 3 000. It's tens of thousands of innocent men women and children.

Since the attack on the United States on September 11 2001 and the US retaliation in Afghanistan and Iraq there must be few people who have not felt a twinge of nostalgia for the cold war.

Whether we knew many who died on September 11 or personally knew none we all lost something on that day. Innocence. Security. A trust that our homeland would always be safe.

You know people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know all time is uncertain. I mean it was uncertain back in - in 2007 we just didn't know it was uncertain. It was - uncertain on September 10th 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th 1987 you just didn't know it.

The devastating punch we took on September 11th still reverberates throughout American society.

Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but we thought if people needed a crutch for consolation where's the harm? September 11th changed all that.

It was not a religion that attacked us that September day. It was al-Qaeda. We will not sacrifice the liberties we cherish or hunker down behind walls of suspicion and mistrust.

There is a direct line relationship between what happened in Afghanistan in the work up to 11 September 2001 and what we're doing in Afghanistan today.

The attacks of September 11 - and subsequent acts of terror from London to Madrid to Fort Hood Texas - embody the most repulsive of human instincts the will to power at the price of the lives of others.