In London, the fifth anniversary of 9/11 was Outside the U.S. Embassy, families of 67 Britons who died among the nearly 3,000 victims in New York commemorated their loved ones. British mourners were outnumbered by Americans.

For the British political establishment, it was business as usual. To be fair to Tony Blair — which not even his Cabinet colleagues are these days — he was too busy with Middle East peace talks to be able to make a big speech. Whether persuading Israel to talk to the Lebanese and Palestinians will actually achieve anything, as long as Hezbollah and Hamas are still calling the shots, is another matter. But Mr. Blair is all too familiar with the loneliness of the extra-mile runner. In any case, he had recently made his feelings about 9/11 abundantly clear in America.

The other exception was Margaret Thatcher, who made her presence felt on the White House lawn with a brief but resonant call to arms, “With America, Britain stands in the front line against Islamist fanatics who hate our beliefs, our liberties and our citizens. We must not falter. We must not fail.”

But the days are past when most British hearts would fill with pride at the sight of the Iron Lady encouraging Ronald Reagan or bolstering George Bush Senior. Five years after the worst terrorist attack in modern times, there was little sense of solidarity with Americans.

The BBC was up to all its old tricks. President Bush’s notably resolute and statesmanlike speech was caricatured as mere “electioneering.” And whom did the BBC invite to comment on the anniversary? Why, Gore Vidal — of course! — whose preposterous conspiracy theories were indulged in one of the least forensic interviews I have ever heard.

To nobody’s surprise, a poll commissioned by the BBC found that 55% believe that British foreign policy is too closely aligned with America, as opposed to 19% who think it is about right. Unfortunately, this finding is broadly in line with other recent data, including a Daily Telegraph poll revealing that President Bush is deeply unpopular, that Mr. Blair is seen as his poodle, and that anti-American attitudes, political and cultural, are now widely held across the board.

I can only suppose that such evidence prompted David Cameron, the Tory leader, to choose this of all days to deliver a speech to a mainly American audience that could hardly have contrasted more starkly with Lady Thatcher’s.

Mr. Cameron distanced himself from the “failures” of the neoconservative policies associated with Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair, describing himself as a “liberal conservative.” The Bush administration’s response to 9/11, he suggested, “has fanned the flames of anti-Americanism, both here in Britain and around the world.”

Criticizing Mr. Blair for his “slavish” relationship with America, Mr. Cameron called for European leadership, echoing Senator McCain, who will address the Conservative Party conference here next month. “We have never, until recently, been uncritical allies of America,” he added. To reinforce the point, he attacked detention at Guantanamo Bay and “disproportionate Israeli bombing in Lebanon” as examples of the West’s abandonment of “the principles of civilization.” Instead, he called for more “humility and patience” in dealing with the Muslim world.

Now, I don’t know how all this sounds in New York, from where I sit it positively reeks of appeasement. How precisely would “humility” gain the respect even of the moderate Arab regimes, let alone those who sponsor terror? Was it “humility” that drove Saddam and the Taliban from power, or induced Libya to renounce nuclear weapons and Syria to withdraw from Lebanon? Would any amount of “patience” persuade Mr. Ahmadinejad to give up on his nuclear program or his genocidal plans to annihilate Israel?

But Mr. Cameron also knows all about Islam. The terrorists, he declared, “are driven by a wholly incorrect interpretation — an extreme distortion — of the Islamic faith.” However, the “deformed vision of Islam which inspires some of them is part of a wider picture that includes the perception by many Muslims that Islam is under attack … and the belief that the West deliberately fails to resolve issues of crucial concern to Muslims, like Palestine.”

In other words: to stop both the terror and the anti-Americanism, the West must defer to the — wholly unfounded — perceptions and beliefs of “moderate” Muslims. If this is not a prelude to appeasement, what is?

As it happens, the leader of the most influential Muslim organization in Britain spelled out the “perception” of his community on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary. Muhammad Abdul Bari, the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, told the Sunday Telegraph, “Some police officers and sections of the media are demonizing Muslims, treating them as if they’re all terrorists — and that encourages other people to do the same. If that demonization continues, then Britain will have to deal with two million Muslim terrorists — 700,000 of them in London.”

This is, to say the least, a less than reassuring message. In fact, it is blackmail. Mr. Bari was complaining about a warning from Peter Clarke, the senior Scotland Yard officer in charge of anti-terrorism, that his force is now treating “thousands” of British Muslims as potential terrorists. Leaders of other minority communities would be ashamed that such large-scale surveillance should be necessary. Mr. Bari, like most of his fellow Muslim leaders, prefers to see only “demonization.” And Mr. Cameron, instead of challenging such self-deluding and self-fulfilling prophecies, prefers to lend them credence.

This might not matter, if Mr. Cameron were not ten points ahead in the opinion polls. The Labor Party is tearing itself to pieces. Last weekend Mr. Blair was forced to announce that he will quit within a year. It is still quite possible that he will go much sooner.

His likely successor, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, promises to maintain Mr. Blair’s foreign policy, though that could of course change once he is in office. He could face a challenge from Home Secretary, John Reid, whose reputation as a tough guy was enhanced by his handling of the conspiracy to blow up transatlantic airliners. But whoever takes over next year, it is widely expected that the Labor Party will lose the next election. So Mr. Cameron has just two or three years in which to mature as a politician. He is not ready to lead his country yet. Take the “European leadership” for which Mr. Cameron and Senator McCain are calling. This week the Islamists must be laughing at the spectacle of Nato member states falling over themselves to find excuses not to contribute troops to Afghanistan, even though the Taliban insurrection there is becoming more dangerous by the day.

There can only be one loser in this war — and it is not going to be America. But America cannot save Europe from itself. It must make up its mind whose side it is on. If European civilization ends, in T.S. Eliot’s words, not with a bang but a whimper, we shall have no one to blame but ourselves.