Nestled in the rolling hills of England is stately Southwick Hall, now home to the Royal Navy's elitist school for specialist navigators. In its high-ceilinged grand reception hall, now the officers wardroom mess, is a huge wall map unchanged for 60 years. It shows the exact disposition of the force poised to cross the channel and destroy the Nazi war machine. What an awesome force it was----- the largest armada ever assembled in history. In the bays and coves of England waited 4,000 warships and thousands of smaller landing craft to transport the first wave of 150,000 men to Normandy's beaches. At airports and airstrips 11,000 aircraft prepared to support the landing. General Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander at his Southwick Hall Headquarters, had taken the decision to launch the historic attack on this the 6th of June 1944, enshrined in folklore as "The Longest Day". Within a year Germany was defeated and the world was free. But who was really free ? And at what cost ?

The Second World War took its bitter toll. 92 million troops took part. Military forces reported 14 million killed. Civilian casualties were even higher, with an estimated 17 million dead. That means an average of 15,000 dead every single day of the 5 years of war. Another 18 million were wounded and 17 million were taken prisoner. Worse than the casualties were the chilling atrocities committed by the antagonists. Horror stories emerged of Germans systematically killing – indeed, baking in custom made, high efficiency ovens – 6 million Jews. Not forgetting the millions of other "lower races". Atrocities committed by the Germans were perhaps the most horrendous in history. Their Allies the Japanese won universal ignomy for their cruelty and ruthlessness in countries they occupied. 60 years later, even today, their shameless use of tens of thousands of Korean women for officially sponsored sexual gratification of their soldiers is an indelible blot on their nation. The Americans, at the forefront of a so-called war of liberation, had no hesitation to go in not only for the kill but also for the overkill. Japan was virtually destroyed, their Navy and Air Force decimated, their troops a pathetic caricature of the conquering heroes of a few years back and their formidable war industries reduced to rubble. Yet the Americans chose to flatten Hiroshima and Nagasaki in two infamous days of terror. Two atom bombs killed, maimed and disabled hundreds of thousands of innocent children, women and old folks indiscriminately in the most brazen, senseless and un-warranted use of weapons of mass destruction. The crass folly of their parents' generation has come to haunt the innocent citizens of today's America, who live in mortal terror of the atom bomb, their very own creation, being used against them.

The Longest Day liberated some countries of Western Europe which had been under the German Nazi jackboot for a few years. But it also resulted in 50 years of terror for Eastern Europe under Soviet occupation, which only ended with the collapse of the Evil Empire at the end of the 20th Century. It is indeed ironic that the War began after two days of German occupation of Poland; after the War Poland remained under Russian occupation for the next 50 years.

The Second World War was also the final nail in the coffin of European colonialism. Out of the ashes of the war, liberation movements sprang up across Africa and Asia. The Jewel in the Crown was the first great prize to go, with fifty other states emerging free over the next few years. There was, however, one dark shadow. Foolish Machiavellian decisions led to disputes such as Kashmir and Palestine, which continue to be major crisis points, with not a remote hope of their resolution in the foreseeable future. While Western Europe gained immensely by having the longest period of peace in over a thousand years (primarily through solid democracies taking root), the grand victors of the war unabashedly propped up oppressive dictatorial regimes wherever it suited them. In the entire Muslim Middle East, be it Saudi Arabia or Egypt, Libya or Abu Dhabi, Saddam or the Taliban, Palestine or Pakistan, Kuwait or the Shah, dictators were created or propped up by the U.S. for decades. In every one of these autocratic states frustrated youth, denied a voice in the affairs of their own lands by well-entrenched and ruthless dictators, were left with no option but to turn to violence. No terror movement can survive in a democracy. All known terrorist organizations of today are based in dictatorships. There is no Clash of Civilizations. Terrorists basically want dictators in their countries removed. Innocent casualties like the World Trade Centre are, as the Americans so brazenly put it, merely " Collateral damage". Post World War Twentieth Century created these dictators; the Twenty First Century must surely begin by crushing them.

D-Day the 6th of June sixty years ago ushered in an era of unparalleled peace and prosperity for Western Europe and paradoxically legalized the brutal repression of Eastern Europe by Russia for the next 50 years. While colonial dictatorship was virtually eliminated , most of the free lands quickly came under the boots of domestic dictators ruthlessly ruling the poorest, most oppressed and wretched of the world. No wonder then, that these countries have become incubators of suicide bombers and terrorists. Which one or the other of the terrorist organizations may have picked up a bomb or two from Qadeer Khan's treacherous 'Bomb Bazar' is the big unknown, with ramifications too horrific to contemplate. Indeed there are many lessons to be learnt from the aftermaths of the Longest Day ------ some pleasant, others bleak and yet others disastrous. Which lessons are the right ones for us ? And which ones will we ever learn ? Time is fast running out. We have to make our choices now. Before the terrorists really strike.