What sums up the Uh-Ohs better than the visual of people waiting in line at airports to remove their shoes, which might be Crocs or Ugg boots?

Yet Nigerian banker’s son Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, educated at the British International School in West Africa and University College in London, flies from Amsterdam to Detroit Christmas Day and allegedly tries to blow up a Northwest flight with 278 passengers and 11 crew members on board.

Peace, prosperity and the national unity after 9/11/01 were squandered by our feckless political leaders who invaded Iraq, let Osama bin-Laden get away, plunged us into forever war, spent all our treasure, made their campaign contributors whole and left us the bill for destroying an unregulated Wild West economy.

Former vice president Dick Cheney made the comeback of the year.

Turns out his undisclosed location for eight years of the Bush administration was a Fox hole down the hall from Karl Rove.

“It doesn’t matter,” quoth Cheney on Nov. 5, 2006, referring to polls repeatedly finding a majority of Americans opposed the Iraq War, confirming any suspicions the ruling plutocrats don’t represent us.

Cheney popped his head out, as he does on an almost daily basis today, to declare, “It is clear once against that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war.”

To which Obama said Jan. 2, “Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.

“We will do whatever it takes to defeat them and defend our country,” as he detailed that a Yemen-based branch of al-Qaida was behind the attempt.

The beginning of the Uh-Ohs, spanning 9/11/2001, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the global financial meltdown of the past year, seems way longer than a mere 10 years. Back then, Jennifer Aniston was a “Friend” married to Brad Pitt.

The Bush administration’s distracting “War on Terror” is credited with accelerating the West’s decline.

China’s economy is growing at 8 percent a year, even in 2009. It and India have 40 percent of the world’s population. This year, for the first time, China built more cars than the United States.

Goldman and Sachs’ 2003 forecast that the Chinese economy would surpass the U.S. in the mid-2040s could happen 20 years sooner.

Will our empire go the way of Europe’s after fighting two world wars in 30 years? Or will climate change level that playing field?

Asia is vulnerable to floods, storms and droughts which could hinder food production.

John Eby is Daily News managing editor. E-mail him at john.eby @leaderpub.com.