Ten years to the day when the world’s history was suddenly, abruptly, turned upside down. Things were never the same afterwards.

For a long time – and even still today – the images we saw were imprinted on our minds: the second plane crashing into the Twin Towers, the sight of people jumping to their deaths, the Towers collapsing, the endless day of people walking away from that mayhem, covered with the ashes of the Towers, the impotence, the rage, as people lost contact with their families, as families waited in vain for their beloved ones.

And then, slowly, as the dust settled, the list of the dead, then the names, the lives so abruptly and cruelly terminated, their absolute innocence in this global warfare – they were not combatants, just ordinary people going about their ordinary lives, never expecting to become victims in a war they did not even know was on.

Also, the stories of so much courage shown on that day, especially by the fire-fighters who climbed the stairs to their certain doom, the courage of the passengers on the fourth plane who overcame their captors to thwart what would have been that plane’s target.

“Never Forget” – this was the slogan chosen, the call for America to unite and remember the nearly 3,000 lives lost. This is the slogan we choose as ours today on this 10th anniversary. Never forget.

If we take the long view, what came after 9/11 – the intensification of fighting in Afghanistan, regime change in Iraq – were events that followed on 9/11. But that does not mean that the Free World has fully understood the nature of the beast that attacked it on that day.

We may even say that attacking and invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein, the aftermath of which was terrible and full of mistakes, were not really a reaction to 9/11. Iraq was only marginally involved in the 9/11 attacks, and Saudi Arabia, for instance, was more involved. Yet by a logic that still escapes us, George Bush and Tony Blair chose to attack Iraq as if this was America’s response to 9/11.

In Afghanistan, despite such a heavy involvement and loss of American and British lives, the situation today may be even worse than it was 10 years ago. True, Osama Bin Laden has been pursued and killed, but hundreds of Osamas have surfaced, each worse than the other.

The initial reaction by the Free World soon cooled and only the US and Britain forced through a UN resolution that allowed an attack on Iraq. That was done on the barest of reasons – suspicions of weapons of mass destruction, which later turned out to be non-existent. Even as this was going on, the rest of the Free World looked elsewhere. It still has to understand that the real meaning of 9/11 is a threat to the entire Free World, not just to America.

Europe has turned out to be very weak, with as many voices and points of view as there are nations in the continent. For all the rhetoric in the days following 9/11, and not for the first time either, Europe has been – still is – not totally aware that its freedom is at stake and that its freedom is inextricably linked to that of America. Instead, Britain is once again sidelined from the main currents of the continent, not just with regard to the economy but also with regard to fundamental freedom. In this case, just as happened in World War II, Britain is in the right and most of Europe is not.

At the same time, too, the Middle East is still the mess it was on 9/11. There was another bout of Intifada, a counter-productive invasion of Lebanon by Israel, a brutal Israeli repression of Gaza – and the Palestinians are still without a state.

It may be argued that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were not really aimed at pressing a point for Palestinian statehood, just as they were in no way trying to put in practice so-called Islamic principles against the ‘Crusaders’. But the absence of any progress registered in the Middle East cauldron has contributed to the Muslim world not understanding the nature of the terrorist threat to the Free World and to perceiving the whole issue as if is still Muslims versus Christians. It is only fair to say that the Muslim world has not taken clear steps to disengage from terrorism and from covering up and leading up to it. On the one hand, we have declarations of peace from key Muslim leaders but on the other we still have hate-mongering sermons in mosques around the Free World. Anti-Muslim sentiment is on the rise in most European capitals, thus helping to reinforce the ‘clash of civilisations’ that we all deny exists. One simply cannot say that the same hate-mongering sentiment exists in Christian churches, nor is the freedom extended to all religions in the West reciprocated in the Muslim countries.

Never Forget. Over the past 10 years we have had to change our habits, to sacrifice some of our freedoms, to allow ever more intrusive searches at airports, more laws enhancing Homeland Security (and not just in the US), to the point where practices that are decidedly inhumane have been allowed to flourish by the US such as Guantanamo and rendition flights.

Here in Malta we still face huge problems in trying to focus on the crux of the matter. Last week, at a celebration organised by the US Embassy and the Australian High Commission, speakers from Malta were humiliatingly off-focus about the significance of the event. Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi spoke about a cultural policy, Evarist Bartolo spoke about xenophobic sentiment – as if that caused 9/11 – and Jason Azzopardi suggested the twinning of towns with the Third World. A representative from the university simply did not mention 9/11 at all, but just spoke about what her department is doing.

Never Forget. Living on the edge of Europe, facing the turmoil in our neighbours to the South, we – more than others – need to learn the real lessons from 9/11. The world is at war, and has been since 9/11 and even before. The Free World still has to come to terms with 9/11 and to discover the proper response to it. It is now clear that the memory of 9/11 is ill-served by Guantanamo and by the chaos in Baghdad. The entire Muslim world, from Indonesia to Morocco, is inflamed with anti-Americanism and not even Barack Obama with his Cairo speech has been able to turn that around. Other blocs around the world, from the Far East to Latin America, flourish in friendship with the US. The Muslim world, still anchored to its pre-Reformation and pre-Enlightenment fundamentalism, is still a closed world, especially to women.

However, there is hope. The Arab Spring was certainly home-grown and led by the social media. In less than a year it has toppled three obdurate regimes in North Africa, bringing hope to so many other Arab countries. Apart from a predilection for Facebook and Twitter, it has brought in a welcome breeze of democracy that is still in its infancy. There is much that is still shaky, much that still needs to be done, but this is real democracy, from the ground up. And for all America’s bluster, it was mainly carried out by the people themselves (with some help, as in Libya) but not with American boots on the ground.

Perhaps, after 10 years, the Free World is getting there. But it is only if the perpetrators of 9/11 are discarded by the people they intended to protect and liberate that those 3,000 deaths will not have been in vain.