THERE IS A lot happening in the United States now: from the commencement of another National Football League season, to the “Trumpapalooza”-themed Republican midterm convention, to the 25th anniversary of the horrific events of 9/11. And this weekend, President Donald Trump will set foot on Irish shores.

While NFL kick-off is probably most animating the American people, it is worth casting our collective Mind’s Eye back to a moment in history that will forever live in infamy. Those of us of a certain age absorbed images on television of what was transpiring on a beautiful morning in Manhattan that won’t leave us.

It was strange for me in that I had only a few days previously relocated from Boston to Galway. Like many, on hearing the news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre, I presumed that it was a tiny aircraft that had lost its navigation, not a hijacked Boeing 767.

The reality swiftly dawned that it was something far worse. It was pure evil. Family members and friends have long told me that I cannot comprehend just how crazy the following hours were; rumours abounded that numerous flights had been captured and there was an inescapable aura of apocalypse.

The lives and legacies of those who died so tragically, in particular the heroic first responders, are appropriately being remembered a quarter of a century later. This period has passed by incredibly quickly and has been, to put it mildly, a tumultuous one. Among the hugely significant elements of the upheaval that ensued has been America’s squandering of the moral authority and global support it had on 9/11.

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The failed wars prosecuted by George W Bush and neoconservatives in his........

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