Last weekend, at a meeting of the British Irish Association in Cambridge, the Northern Ireland Secretary spoke, with considerable gritty eloquence, of the present, parlous state of the Northern Ireland peace process.
Dr John Reid had no formal script so I cannot give you an exact quotation, but an important part of what he had to say was this.
He told his audience that history taught us that once in a generation, perhaps even once in a century, an opportunity is presented to those involved in a deeply bitter and intractable conflict to find a way to resolve their differences. It is all too easy for that opportunity to slip away because one or other of the parties, probably both, do not recognise the scale of the task that faces them.
One side holds out for just one more concession. The leadership of the other side is put under impossible pressure, perhaps swept away. A spiral of events is set in motion and the chance for peace is lost.
With what now feels like terrible prescience, Dr Reid urged us to look at the example of the Middle East. He reminded us of that moving moment on the White House lawn when old enemies, Palestinian and Israeli, shook hands and pledged themselves to build peace for the sake of all their children.
To many of us that image had seemed like a beacon of hope signalling the way to peace in our own country. Now we look at the Middle East and fear the worst, that the opportunity for a lasting peace between Arab and Jew has been lost for at least another generation.
The Northern Ireland Secretary was speaking just a few days before the terrible events in the US which have, among other consequences, pushed that hope for peace in the Middle East even further away.
Like most people who watched the tragedy unfold on television, I still find it impossible to comprehend the scale of what has happened. I was glad that the President, Mrs McAleese, was there to articulate a human reaction and to focus our minds on the reality for children waiting for parents to come home from work, of parents desperately trying to establish the whereabouts of their sons and daughters.
So much of the reporting and the analysis has concentrated on the political and economic implications of the attack. It is as though the reporters and commentators, unable to absorb the human tragedy, felt more comfortable with the abstractions.
That will change as we hear from the victims and their families, try to come to terms with the numbers of dead and injured, watch the images of grief at the funerals - so familiar from our own experience.
These will have a devastating, and dangerous, impact in the US. America has been stricken and, like a wounded beast, is likely to strike out at anyone and everyone on whom suspicion falls. The point has been made, over and over again, that the world is now a changed, less safe place.
It will be more difficult now to argue that the practice of rational, democratic politics is the only way to combat terrorism and the threat of the unexpected.
In a much smaller way, we have been faced with such a threat and have learned that draconian measures are no substitute for politics and dialogue. It is a lesson we must remember in the days ahead, when the terrorist attacks in the US are discussed in such forums as the UN Security Council.
We have to try and understand too, why it is that not everybody is appalled by what has happened. The scenes of jubilation in some parts of the West Bank have been shocking. The tragic prospect, of course, is that US retribution is likely to fall on many, many innocent Arabs.
It is not so long since the death of a British soldier, or preferably a number of British soldiers, was a cause for celebration in Republican strongholds of Derry and Belfast.
Can we be sure that those days are over? There will be time in the coming weeks to consider the implications of this week's tragedy in the US for our own peace process.
For the moment our thoughts must be for the American people and their political leaders. But already it is evident that Washington is likely to become more isolationist, less open to pleas for help in solving our domestic problems.
It may have been symbolic that a UUP delegation, travelling to Washington to plead the unionist case with the US government, had its plane returned to Belfast.
The republican movement, and other parties making the difficult transition from violence to democratic politics, will find a less sympathetic ear in Washington. Pressure will grow on Sinn FΘin to push for substantive action on decommissioning by the IRA in order to avoid a suspension of the executive later this month.
We will return to these matters. For the moment, it is salutary to return to the comments of John Reid, with which I started this column.
There has been, in recent weeks, a fear that the peace process in Northern Ireland could be slipping away and, with it, the kind of opportunity to achieve a settlement that comes only once in a generation.
Fear and loathing in the Ardoyne have failed to draw the political leaders back into meaningful dialogue. Perhaps the images of horror from the streets of New York and Washington will provide a more effective reminder of what happens when politics fails.
mholland@irish-times.ie