Rupert Cornwell: A nation torn between sorrow, patriotism and fear

Leading a wounded superpower in grieving remembrance, President George Bush went to the symbol of American military might yesterday to vow that the United States would win the war that started amid the death and destruction of 11 September 2001.

On a blue and red draped rostrum in front of the spot where American Airlines flight 77 smashed into the Pentagon's south-west façade, Mr Bush portrayed his country as embarked on a titanic battle between good and evil in "the first great struggle of a new century".

The enemy "won't be stopped by decency or a hint of conscience, but they will be stopped", he warned in a capital torn between sorrow, patriotism and fears of a new attack to mark the first anniversary of the worst terrorist atrocity of modern times. With the colour-coded national security alert at an unprecedented level of orange, indicating a "serious threat", weapons have been deployed at key Washington sites. As in the weeks after 11 September, Vice-President Dick Cheney has cancelled public engagements to vanish to a "secure undisclosed location".

"A year ago this was a battlefield," Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, emphasised in his own speech at the ceremony – and in some respects the battle visibly continues now.

Outside the Pentagon and elsewhere, anti-aircraft missile units armed with live ammunition were seen in the capital for the first time since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Above the city, military planes flew, just as in the first days of shock a year ago.

But the Pentagon not only symbolises grief and American power – the building where the battle plans in the war on terrorism are finalised – it has become an emblem of renewal, as the US heals the physical, if not the psychological scars of 11 September 2001.

A rebuilding programme named Project Phoenix has competed the $500m (£322m) of repairs way ahead of schedule and well under the budgeted cost of $700m (£450m). As long planned, yesterday's anniversary became the day that workers returned to all five floors of the Pentagon's south-west outer E Ring, rebuilt in the same honey-coloured Iniana limestone used for the original construction in 1941.

For an hour, however, the site became half-church, half-patriotic shrine as Mr Bush and Mr Rumsfeld led 14,000 people in remembrance of the 184 people who died there, 125 in the building, the rest on board the hijacked plane.

In a poignant touch, 100 Washington area schoolchildren, classmates of children who died in the disaster or whose parents died, recited the Pledge of Allegiance. At 9.37am, the moment the aircraft hit the building, the crowd fell silent beneath a line of American flags.

On one window a sign was taped, reading "Marian, we miss you." Mr Bush sat still, his eyes closed then blinking briefly, as he clasped hands with his wife Laura. Beside him Mr Rumsfeld, the harshly spoken physical embodiment of US determination to crush the terrorists, sat peering out over the crowd, brushing his hair back with his hand in the way he does at his combative Pentagon news conferences.

As the national anthem began, the American flag flown at the site immediately after the crash was unfurled from the roof of the repaired area. At first the fabric would not unfold properly, held back by the breeze, but then it dropped into its appointed place. "One year ago, men, women and children were killed here because they were Americans, because this place is a symbol of our country's might and resolve," said Mr Bush, who later visited Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and then ground zero in lower Manhattan, the two other sites that will for ever be connected with 11 September.

Last night the President was to deliver a national televised address from Ellis Island in New York, with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop, again symbolising the US values he insists al-Qa'ida failed to destroy.

"The terrorists chose this target hoping to demoralise our country, but they did not succeed," he told the assembly at the Pentagon. "Within minutes brave men and women were rescuing their comrades. Within hours in this building the planning began for a military response. Within weeks, commands went forth from this place to liberate and cleanse the terrorist camps. Within one year this great building has been made whole once again. The murder of innocents cannot be explained, only endured."

But the victims did not die in vain. Their loss moved a nation to action, in a war now being waged on many fronts. "We have captured more than 2,000 terrorists," while "a larger number of killers have met their end in combat". Obliquely but unmistakably, the President warned of a war against Iraq which would also be directed from the Pentagon. Despite the successes in Afghanistan, "a great deal is left to do", he said. "The greatest tasks and the greatest dangers will fall to the armed forces of the US".

The terrorists had intended 11 September to be "a day when innocents died", Mr Rumsfeld said. "But they failed, Instead it was a day when heroes were born."