By Arun Kumar,

Washington, Sep 10 (IANS) For the world's sole super power, the United States, Sep 11, 2001, was a defining moment. Within a space of 75 minutes, as 19 hijackers on four planes tore into the political and economic heart of the world's oldest democracy, it found itself facing a new divide in what President George W. Bush called a "new world" to fight a "dangerous new war".

Pre-9/11 and post-9/11 - as the Americans call Sep 11 - became the new idiom with free access and welcome smiles giving way to stringent security checks and somewhat suspicious frowns at people from other distant lands.

The Muslim community in America, be it from the Middle East or South Asia, in particular found itself increasingly isolated as epithets like "Islamic Fascists" - as Bush called the plotters of the foiled London bombers - flew around.

Many Muslim immigrants were asked to register with the government, and families got unexpected knocks on the door as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other law enforcement authorities put them under the scanner.

Sep 11 put the conservative Muslims on the defensive. Quite a few women shed the veil and their men shaved off their beards or looked for other ways to get assimilated into secular society in a bid to balance faith with the country of their chosen residence.

Others went looking for a separate Muslim identity distinct from America and its sexually oriented pop-culture and became unwitting fodder for the terrorists.

But this nation of 300 million people also found a rush of solidarity as the twin World Trade Centre tower fell and a gaping hole was left in the Pentagon, citadel of its defence establishment.

Opposition Democrats and ruling Republicans sank their differences and a new bipartisan spirit prevailed, reflecting the sentiments expressed by the French daily Le Monde, "We are all Americans".

Five years later, as America relives the horror of 9/11, the smiles for strangers are slowly but surely returning, but so are political realities with both sides looking at the 'global war on terror' through their own prisms.

Republican President Bush launched a verbal blitz in the run up to the 9/11 anniversary suggesting that the war on terror would be a long hard one like the cold war and America would stay put in Iraq until its mission was accomplished.

In one speech he quoted extensively from the words of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his other allies as he outlined a new strategy to fight the enduring threat of terror. In another he sought quick action from Congress for authority for military commissions to try terrorism suspects.

A flurry of accusations came from the opposition with suggestions that the president was exploiting the anniversary to plug his party's line before the Congressional elections two months ahead.

Democrats also demanded that America pull out of Iraq before the year end and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld be ousted for his "staying the course" policy in an unending war.

America today is more unsafe than it was before 9/11, opponents of the government allege, citing the number of international terrorism cases falling from a peak of 355 in 2002 to 46 in 2005 - just about the pre-2001 level- as evidence.

Supporters of the administration on the other hand cite these very numbers as proof that their vigilance has paid off in bringing down terrorist incidents by prevention.

Then there are the inevitable conspiracy theories with some suggesting that the 9/11 attacks were in fact the handiwork of the administration designed to give it an excuse to fight a war for oil in the Middle East.

Two 20 something kids have even produced a short video of "Loose Ends" picked up from the Internet footage of the attacks to suggest that the twin towers fell in a controlled implosion, the Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile and not a plane, and the third flight headed for the White House was taken down by the US Air Force.

There is of course a perfectly logical explanation for the little puffs of dust seen rising from the bottom of the twin towers even before they collapsed and a smaller hole in the outer wall of the Pentagon.

The fumes at the bottom rose because of the build up of air pressure lower down as the upper floor fell and the hole in the Pentagon was only 75 feet wide because it was made by the fuselage of the Boeing 757 after its 124-foot-wide wings had broken off.

The fifth anniversary Monday also witnesses a whole host of rituals like peace marches, memorial meetings, interviews with the survivors and so on.

Even the local MK Gandhi Institute, founded by a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, is hosting a day of peace and reconciliation on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial Centre to mark what is coincidentally the 100th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's first peaceful non-violent protest in South Africa.

To mark the anniversary, CNN plans to bring the ultimate retrospective - a real-time webcast of Sep 11 coverage from 8.30 a.m.,shortly before the first report of an airplane hitting the first tower came in, to midnight.

Life goes on, as the cliché suggests. But at the end of another day, another anniversary, one wonders whether America would be the same ever again.