terror. They are experts. Algeria, Indonesia delighted
to have even more US support for atrocities it is
carrying out in Ache and elsewhere. Now we can run
through the list, the list of the states that have
joined the coalition against terror is quite
impressive. They have a characteristic in common. They
are certainly among the leading terrorist states in
the world. And they happen to be led by the world
champion.

What is Terrorism?

Well that brings us back to the question, what is
terrorism? I have been assuming we understand it.
Well, what is it? Well, there happen to be some easy
answers to this. There is an official definition. You
can find it in the US code or in US army manuals. A
brief statement of it taken from a US army manual, is
fair enough, is that terror is the calculated use of
violence or the threat of violence to attain political
or religious ideological goals through intimidation,
coercion, or instilling fear. That's terrorism. That's
a fair enough definition. I think it is reasonable to
accept that. The problem is that it can't be accepted
because if you accept that, all the wrong consequences
follow. For example, all the consequences I have just
been reviewing. Now there is a major effort right now
at the UN to try to develop a comprehensive treaty on
terrorism. When Kofi Annan got the Nobel prize the
other day, you will notice he was reported as saying
that we should stop wasting time on this and really
get down to it.

But there's a problem. If you use the official
definition of terrorism in the comprehensive treaty
you are going to get completely the wrong results. So
that can't be done. In fact, it is even worse than
that. If you take a look at the definition of Low
Intensity Warfare which is official US policy you find
that it is a very close paraphrase of what I just
read. In fact, Low Intensity Conflict is just another
name for terrorism. That's why all countries, as far
as I know, call whatever horrendous acts they are
carrying out, counter terrorism. We happen to call it
Counter Insurgency or Low Intensity Conflict. So
that's a serious problem. You can't use the actual
definitions. You've got to carefully find a definition
that doesn't have all the wrong consequences.

Why did the United States and Israel Vote
Against a Major Resolution Condemning Terrorism?

There are some other problems. Some of them came up in
December 1987, at the peak of the first war on
terrorism, that's when the furor over the plague was
peaking. The United Nations General Assembly passed a
very strong resolution against terrorism, condemning
the plague in the strongest terms, calling on every
state to fight against it in every possible way. It
passed unanimously. One country, Honduras abstained.
Two votes against; the usual two, United States and
Israel. Why should the United States and Israel vote
against a major resolution condemning terrorism in the
strongest terms, in fact pretty much the terms that
the Reagan administration was using? Well, there is a
reason. There is one paragraph in that long resolution
which says that nothing in this resolution infringes
on the rights of people struggling against racist and
colonialist regimes or foreign military occupation to
continue with their resistance with the assistance of
others, other states, states outside in their just
cause. Well, the United States and Israel can't accept
that. The main reason that they couldn't at the time
was because of South Africa. South Africa was an ally,
officially called an ally. There was a terrorist force
in South Africa. It was called the African National
Congress. They were a terrorist force officially.
South Africa in contrast was an ally and we certainly
couldn't support actions by a terrorist group
struggling against a racist regime. That would be
impossible.

And of course there is another one. Namely the Israeli
occupied territories, now going into its 35th year.
Supported primarily by the United States in blocking a
diplomatic settlement for 30 years now, still is. And
you can't have that. There is another one at the time.
Israel was occupying Southern Lebanon and was being
combated by what the US calls a terrorist force,
Hizbullah, which in fact succeeded in driving Israel
out of Lebanon. And we can't allow anyone to struggle
against a military occupation when it is one that we
support so therefore the US and Israel had to vote
against the major UN resolution on terrorism. And I
mentioned before that a US vote against...is
essentially a veto. Which is only half the story. It
also vetoes it from history. So none of this was every
reported and none of it appeared in the annals of
terrorism. If you look at the scholarly work on
terrorism and so on, nothing that I just mentioned
appears. The reason is that it has got the wrong
people holding the guns. You have to carefully hone
the definitions and the scholarship and so on so that
you come out with the right conclusions; otherwise it
is not respectable scholarship and honorable
journalism. Well, these are some of problems that are
hampering the effort to develop a comprehensive treaty
against terrorism. Maybe we should have an academic
conference or something to try to see if we can figure
out a way of defining terrorism so that it comes out
with just the right answers, not the wrong answers.
That won't be easy.

4. What are the Origins of the September 11 Crime?

Well, let's drop that and turn to the 4th question,
What are the origins of the September 11 crimes? Here
we have to make a distinction between 2 categories
which shouldn't be run together. One is the actual
agents of the crime, the other is kind of a reservoir
of at least sympathy, sometimes support that they
appeal to even among people who very much oppose the
criminals and the actions. And those are 2 different
things.

Category 1: The Likely Perpetrators

Well, with regard to the perpetrators, in a certain
sense we are not really clear. The United States
either is unable or unwilling to provide any evidence,
any meaningful evidence. There was a sort of a play a
week or two ago when Tony Blair was set up to try to
present it. I don't exactly know what the purpose of
this was. Maybe so that the US could look as though
it's holding back on some secret evidence that it
can't reveal or that Tony Blair could strike proper
Churchillian poses or something or other. Whatever the
PR [public relations] reasons were, he gave a
presentation which was in serious circles considered
so absurd that it was barely even mentioned. So the
Wall Street Journal, for example, one of the more
serious papers had a small story on page 12, I think,
in which they pointed out that there was not much
evidence and then they quoted some high US official as
saying that it didn't matter whether there was any
evidence because they were going to do it anyway. So
why bother with the evidence? The more ideological
press, like the New York Times and others, they had
big front-page headlines. But the Wall Street Journal
reaction was reasonable and if you look at the
so-called evidence you can see why. But let's assume
that it's true. It is astonishing to me how weak the
evidence was. I sort of thought you could do better
than that without any intelligence service [audience
laughter]. In fact, remember this was after weeks of
the most intensive investigation in history of all the
intelligence services of the western world working
overtime trying to put something together. And it was
a prima facie, it was a very strong case even before
you had anything. And it ended up about where it
started, with a prima facie case. So let's assume that
it is true. So let's assume that, it looked obvious
the first day, still does, that the actual
perpetrators come from the radical Islamic, here
called, fundamentalist networks of which the bin Laden
network is undoubtedly a significant part. Whether
they were involved or not nobody knows. It doesn't
really matter much.

Where did they come from?

That's the background, those networks. Well, where do
they come from? We know all about that. Nobody knows
about that better than the CIA because it helped
organize them and it nurtured them for a long time.
They were brought together in the 1980's actually by
the CIA and its associates elsewhere: Pakistan,
Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China was
involved, they may have been involved a little bit
earlier, maybe by 1978. The idea was to try to harass
the Russians, the common enemy. According to President
Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew
Brzezinski, the US got involved in mid 1979. Do you
remember, just to put the dates right, that Russia
invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. Ok. According to
Brzezinski, the US support for the mojahedin fighting
against the government began 6 months earlier. He is
very proud of that. He says we drew the Russians into,
in his words, an Afghan trap, by supporting the
mojahedin, getting them to invade, getting them into
the trap. Now then we could develop this terrific
mercenary army. Not a small one, maybe 100,000 men or
so bringing together the best killers they could find,
who were radical Islamist fanatics from around North
Africa, Saudi Arabia....anywhere they could find them.
They were often called the Afghanis but many of them,
like bin Laden, were not Afghans. They were brought by
the CIA and its friends from elsewhere. Whether
Brzezinski is telling the truth or not, I don't know.
He may have been bragging, he is apparently very proud
of it, knowing the consequences incidentally. But
maybe it's true. We'll know someday if the documents
are ever released. Anyway, that's his perception. By
January 1980 it is not even in doubt that the US was
organizing the Afghanis and this massive military
force to try to cause the Russians maximal trouble. It
was a legitimate thing for the Afghans to fight the
Russian invasion. But the US intervention was not
helping the Afghans. In fact, it helped destroy the
country and much more. The Afghanis, so called, had
their own...it did force the Russians to withdrew,
finally. Although many analysts believe that it
probably delayed their withdrawal because they were
trying to get out of it. Anyway, whatever, they did
withdraw.

Meanwhile, the terrorist forces that the CIA was
organizing, arming, and training were pursuing their
own agenda, right away. It was no secret. One of the
first acts was in 1981 when they assassinated the
President of Egypt, who was one of the most
enthusiastic of their creators. In 1983, one suicide
bomber, who may or may not have been connected, it's
pretty shadowy, nobody knows. But one suicide bomber
drove the US army-military out of Lebanon. And it
continued. They have their own agenda. The US was
happy to mobilize them to fight its cause but
meanwhile they are doing their own thing. They were
clear very about it. After 1989, when the Russians had
withdrawn, they simply turned elsewhere. Since then
they have been fighting in Chechnya, Western China,
Bosnia, Kashmir, South East Asia, North Africa, all
over the place.

The Are Telling Us What They Think

They are telling us just what they think. The United
States wants to silence the one free television
channel in the Arab world because it's broadcasting a
whole range of things from Powell over to Osama bin
Laden. So the US is now joining the repressive regimes
of the Arab world that try to shut it up. But if you
listen to it, if you listen to what bin Laden says,
it's worth it. There is plenty of interviews. And
there are plenty of interviews by leading Western
reporters, if you don't want to listen to his own
voice, Robert Fisk and others. And what he has been
saying is pretty consistent for a long time. He's not
the only one but maybe he is the most eloquent. It's
not only consistent over a long time, it is consistent
with their actions. So there is every reason to take
it seriously. Their prime enemy is what they call the
corrupt and oppressive authoritarian brutal regimes of
the Arab world and when the say that they get quite a
resonance in the region. They also want to defend and
they want to replace them by properly Islamist
governments. That's where they lose the people of the
region. But up till then, they are with them. From
their point of view, even Saudi Arabia, the most
extreme fundamentalist state in the world, I suppose,
short of the Taliban, which is an offshoot, even
that's not Islamist enough for them. Ok, at that
point, they get very little support, but up until that
point they get plenty of support. Also they want to
defend Muslims elsewhere. They hate the Russians like
poison, but as soon as the Russians pulled out of
Afghanistan, they stopped carrying out terrorist acts
in Russia as they had been doing with CIA backing
before that within Russia, not just in Afghanistan.
They did move over to Chechnya. But there they are
defending Muslims against a Russian invasion. Same
with all the other places I mentioned. From their
point of view, they are defending the Muslims against
the infidels. And they are very clear about it and
that is what they have been doing.

Why did they turn against the United States?

Now why did they turn against the United States? Well
that had to do with what they call the US invasion of
Saudi Arabia. In 1990, the US established permanent
military bases in Saudi Arabia which from their point
of view is comparable to a Russian invasion of
Afghanistan except that Saudi Arabia is way more
important. That's the home of the holiest sites of
Islam. And that is when their activities turned
against the Unites States. If you recall, in 1993 they
tried to blow up the World Trade Center. Got part of
the way, but not the whole way and that was only part
of it. The plans were to blow up the UN building, the
Holland and Lincoln tunnels, the FBI building. I think
there were others on the list. Well, they sort of got
part way, but not all the way. One person who is
jailed for that, finally, among the people who were
jailed, was a Egyptian cleric who had been brought
into the United States over the objections of the
Immigration Service, thanks to the intervention of the
CIA which wanted to help out their friend. A couple
years later he was blowing up the World Trade Center.
And this has been going on all over. I'm not going to
run through the list but it's, if you want to
understand it, it's consistent. It's a consistent
picture. It's described in words. It's revealed in
practice for 20 years. There is no reason not to take
it seriously. That's the first category, the likely
perpetrators.

Category 2: What about the reservoir of support?

What about the reservoir of support? Well, it's not
hard to find out what that is. One of the good things
that has happened since September 11 is that some of
the press and some of the discussion has begun to open
up to some of these things. The best one to my
knowledge is the Wall Street Journal which right away
began to run, within a couple of days, serious
reports, searching serious reports, on the reasons why
the people of the region, even though they hate bin
Laden and despise everything he is doing, nevertheless
support him in many ways and even regard him as the
conscience of Islam, as one said. Now the Wall Street
Journal and others, they are not surveying public
opinion. They are surveying the opinion of their
friends: bankers, professionals, international
lawyers, businessmen tied to the United States, people
who they interview in MacDonalds restaurant, which is
an elegant restaurant there, wearing fancy American
clothes. That's the people they are interviewing
because they want to find out what their attitudes
are. And their attitudes are very explicit and very
clear and in many ways consonant with the message of
bin Laden and others. They are very angry at the
United States because of its support of authoritarian
and brutal regimes; its intervention to block any move
towards democracy; its intervention to stop economic
development; its policies of devastating the civilian
societies of Iraq while strengthening Saddam Hussein;
and they remember, even if we prefer not to, that the
United States and Britain supported Saddam Hussein
right through his worst atrocities, including the
gassing of the Kurds, bin Laden brings that up
constantly, and they know it even if we don't want to.
And of course their support for the Israeli military
occupation which is harsh and brutal. It is now in its
35th year. The US has been providing the overwhelming
economic, military, and diplomatic support for it, and
still does. And they know that and they don't like it.
Especially when that is paired with US policy towards
Iraq, towards the Iraqi civilian society which is
getting destroyed. Ok, those are the reasons roughly.
And when bin Laden gives those reasons, people
recognize it and support it.

Now that's not the way people here like to think about
it, at least educated liberal opinion. They like the
following line which has been all over the press,
mostly from left liberals, incidentally. I have not
done a real study but I think right wing opinion has
generally been more honest. But if you look at say at
the New York Times at the first op-ed they ran by
Ronald Steel, serious left liberal intellectual. He
asks Why do they hate us? This is the same day, I
think, that the Wall Street Journal was running the
survey on why they hate us. So he says "They hate us
because we champion a new world order of capitalism,
individualism, secularism, and democracy that should
be the norm everywhere." That's why they hate us. The
same day the Wall Street Journal is surveying the
opinions of bankers, professionals, international
lawyers and saying `look, we hate you because you are
blocking democracy, you are preventing economic
development, you are supporting brutal regimes,
terrorist regimes and you are doing these horrible
things in the region.' A couple days later, Anthony
Lewis, way out on the left, explained that the
terrorist seek only "apocalyptic nihilism," nothing
more and nothing we do matters. The only consequence
of our actions, he says, that could be harmful is that
it makes it harder for Arabs to join in the
coalition's anti-terrorism effort. But beyond that,
everything we do is irrelevant.

Well, you know, that's got the advantage of being sort
of comforting. It makes you feel good about yourself,
and how wonderful you are. It enables us to evade the
consequences of our actions. It has a couple of
defects. One is it is at total variance with
everything we know. And another defect is that it is a
perfect way to ensure that you escalate the cycle of
violence. If you want to live with your head buried in
the sand and pretend they hate us because they're
opposed to globalization, that's why they killed Sadat
20 years ago, and fought the Russians, tried to blow
up the World Trade Center in 1993. And these are all
people who are in the midst of ... corporate
globalization but if you want to believe that,
yeh...comforting. And it is a great way to make sure
that violence escalates. That's tribal violence. You
did something to me, I'll do something worse to you. I
don't care what the reasons are. We just keep going
that way. And that's a way to do it. Pretty much
straight, left-liberal opinion.

5. What are the Policy Options?

What are the policy options? Well, there are a number.
A narrow policy option from the beginning was to
follow the advice of really far out radicals like the
Pope [audience laughter]. The Vatican immediately said
look it's a horrible terrorist crime. In the case of
crime, you try to find the perpetrators, you bring
them to justice, you try them. You don't kill innocent
civilians. Like if somebody robs my house and I think
the guy who did it is probably in the neighborhood
across the street, I don't go out with an assault
rifle and kill everyone in that neighborhood. That's
not the way you deal with crime, whether it's a small
crime like this one or really massive one like the US
terrorist war against Nicaragua, even worse ones and
others in between. And there are plenty of precedents
for that. In fact, I mentioned a precedent, Nicaragua,
a lawful, a law abiding state, that's why presumably
we had to destroy it, which followed the right
principles. Now of course, it didn't get anywhere
because it was running up against a power that
wouldn't allow lawful procedures to be followed. But
if the United States tried to pursue them, nobody
would stop them. In fact, everyone would applaud. And
there are plenty of other precedents.

IRA Bombs in London

When the IRA set off bombs in London, which is pretty
serious business, Britain could have, apart from the
fact that it was unfeasible, let's put that aside, one
possible response would have been to destroy Boston
which is the source of most of the financing. And of
course to wipe out West Belfast. Well, you know, quite
apart from the feasibility, it would have been
criminal idiocy. The way to deal with it was pretty
much what they did. You know, find the perpetrators;
bring them to trial; and look for the reasons. Because
these things don't come out of nowhere. They come from
something. Whether it is a crime in the streets or a
monstrous terrorist crime or anything else. There's
reasons. And usually if you look at the reasons, some
of them are legitimate and ought to be addressed,
independently of the crime, they ought to be addressed
because they are legitimate. And that's the way to
deal with it. There are many such examples.

But there are problems with that. One problem is that
the United States does not recognize the jurisdiction
of international institutions. So it can't go to them.
It has rejected the jurisdiction of the World Court.
It has refused to ratify the International Criminal
Court. It is powerful enough to set up a new court if
it wants so that wouldn't stop anything. But there is
a problem with any kind of a court, mainly you need
evidence. You go to any kind of court, you need some
kind of evidence. Not Tony Blair talking about it on
television. And that's very hard. It may be impossible
to find.

Leaderless Resistance

You know, it could be that the people who did it,
killed themselves. Nobody knows this better than the
CIA. These are decentralized, nonhierarchic networks.
They follow a principle that is called Leaderless
Resistance. That's the principle that has been
developed by the Christian Right terrorists in the
United States. It's called Leaderless Resistance. You
have small groups that do things. They don't talk to
anybody else. There is a kind of general background of
assumptions and then you do it. Actually people in the
anti war movement are very familiar with it. We used
to call it affinity groups. If you assume correctly
that whatever group you are in is being penetrated by
the FBI, when something serious is happening, you
don't do it in a meeting. You do it with some people
you know and trust, an affinity group and then it
doesn't get penetrated. That's one of the reasons why
the FBI has never been able to figure out what's going
on in any of the popular movements. And other
intelligence agencies are the same. They can't. That's
leaderless resistance or affinity groups, and
decentralized networks are extremely hard to
penetrate. And it's quite possible that they just
don't know. When Osama bin Laden claims he wasn't
involved, that's entirely possible. In fact, it's
pretty hard to imagine how a guy in a cave in
Afghanistan, who doesn't even have a radio or a
telephone could have planned a highly sophisticated
operation like that. Chances are it's part of the
background. You know, like other leaderless resistance
terrorist groups. Which means it's going to be
extremely difficult to find evidence.

Establishing Credibility

And the US doesn't want to present evidence because it
wants to be able to do it, to act without evidence.
That's a crucial part of the reaction. You will notice
that the US did not ask for Security Council
authorization which they probably could have gotten
this time, not for pretty reasons, but because the
other permanent members of the Security Council are
also terrorist states. They are happy to join a
coalition against what they call terror, namely in
support of their own terror. Like Russia wasn't going
to veto, they love it. So the US probably could have
gotten Security Council authorization but it didn't
want it. And it didn't want it because it follows a
long-standing principle which is not George Bush, it
was explicit in the Clinton administration,
articulated and goes back much further and that is
that we have the right to act unilaterally. We don't
want international authorization because we act
unilaterally and therefore we don't want it. We don't
care about evidence. We don't care about negotiation.
We don't care about treaties. We are the strongest guy
around; the toughest thug on the block. We do what we
want. Authorization is a bad thing and therefore must
be avoided. There is even a name for it in the
technical literature. It's called establishing
credibility. You have to establish credibility. That's
an important factor in many policies. It was the
official reason given for the war in the Balkans and
the most plausible reason.

You want to know what credibility means, ask your
favorite Mafia Don. He'll explain to you what
credibility means. And it's the same in international
affairs, except it's talked about in universities
using big words, and that sort of thing. But it's
basically the same principle. And it makes sense. And
it usually works. The main historian who has written
about this in the last couple years is Charles Tilly
with a book called Coercion, Capital, and European
States. He points out that violence has been the
leading principle of Europe for hundreds of years and
the reason is because it works. You know, it's very
reasonable. It almost always works. When you have an
overwhelming predominance of violence and a culture of
violence behind it. So therefore it makes sense to
follow it. Well, those are all problems in pursuing
lawful paths. And if you did try to follow them you'd
really open some very dangerous doors. Like the US is
demanding that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden.
And they are responding in a way which is regarded as
totally absurd and outlandish in the west, namely they
are saying, Ok, but first give us some evidence. In
the west, that is considered ludicrous. It's a sign of
their criminality. How can they ask for evidence? I
mean if somebody asked us to hand someone over, we'd
do it tomorrow. We wouldn't ask for any evidence.
[crowd laughter].

Haiti

In fact it is easy to prove that. We don't have to
make up cases. So for example, for the last several
years, Haiti has been requesting the United States to
extradite Emmanuel Constant. He is a major killer. He
is one of the leading figures in the slaughter of
maybe 4000 or 5000 people in the years in the mid
1990's, under the military junta, which incidentally
was being, not so tacitly, supported by the Bush and
the Clinton administrations contrary to illusions.
Anyway he is a leading killer. They have plenty of
evidence. No problem about evidence. He has already
been brought to trial and sentenced in Haiti and they
are asking the United States to turn him over. Well, I
mean do your own research. See how much discussion
there has been of that. Actually Haiti renewed the
request a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't even
mentioned. Why should we turn over a convicted killer
who was largely responsible for killing 4000 or 5000
people a couple of years ago. In fact, if we do turn
him over, who knows what he would say. Maybe he'll say
that he was being funded and helped by the CIA, which
is probably true. We don't want to open that door. And
he is not he only one.

Costa Rica

I mean, for the last about 15 years, Costa Rica which
is the democratic prize, has been trying to get the
United States to hand over a John Hull, a US land
owner in Costa Rica, who they charge with terrorist
crimes. He was using his land, they claim with good
evidence as a base for the US war against Nicaragua,
which is not a controversial conclusion, remember.
There is the World Court and Security Council behind
it. So they have been trying to get the United States
to hand him over. Hear about that one? No.

They did actually confiscate the land of another
American landholder, John Hamilton. Paid compensation,
offered compensation. The US refused. Turned his land
over into a national park because his land was also
being used as a base for the US attack against
Nicaragua. Costa Rica was punished for that one. They
were punished by withholding aid. We don't accept that
kind of insubordination from allies. And we can go on.
If you open the door to questions about extradition it
leads in very unpleasant directions. So that can't be
done.

Reactions in Afghanistan

Well, what about the reactions in Afghanistan. The
initial proposal, the initial rhetoric was for a
massive assault which would kill many people visibly
and also an attack on other countries in the region.
Well the Bush administration wisely backed off from
that. They were being told by every foreign leader,
NATO, everyone else, every specialist, I suppose,
their own intelligence agencies that that would be the
stupidest thing they could possibly do. It would
simply be like opening recruiting offices for bin
Laden all over the region. That's exactly what he
wants. And it would be extremely harmful to their own
interests. So they backed off that one. And they are
turning to what I described earlier which is a kind of
silent genocide. It's a.... well, I already said what
I think about it. I don't think anything more has to
be said. You can figure it out if you do the
arithmetic.

A sensible proposal which is kind of on the verge of
being considered, but it has been sensible all along,
and it is being raised, called for by expatriate
Afghans and allegedly tribal leaders internally, is
for a UN initiative, which would keep the Russians and
Americans out of it, totally. These are the 2
countries that have practically wiped the country out
in the last 20 years. They should be out of it. They
should provide massive reparations. But that's their
only role. A UN initiative to bring together elements
within Afghanistan that would try to construct
something from the wreckage. It's conceivable that
that could work, with plenty of support and no
interference. If the US insists on running it, we
might as well quit. We have a historical record on
that one.

You will notice that the name of this
operation....remember that at first it was going to be
a Crusade but they backed off that because PR (public
relations) agents told them that that wouldn't work
[audience laughter]. And then it was going to be
Infinite Justice, but the PR agents said, wait a
minute, you are sounding like you are divinity. So
that wouldn't work. And then it was changed to
enduring freedom. We know what that means. But nobody
has yet pointed out, fortunately, that there is an
ambiguity there. To endure means to suffer. [audience
laughter]. And a there are plenty of people around the
world who have endured what we call freedom. Again,
fortunately we have a very well-behaved educated class
so nobody has yet pointed out this ambiguity. But if
its done there will be another problem to deal with.
But if we can back off enough so that some more or
less independent agency, maybe the UN, maybe credible
NGO's (non governmental organizations) can take the
lead in trying to reconstruct something from the
wreckage, with plenty of assistance and we owe it to
them. Them maybe something would come out. Beyond
that, there are other problems.

An Easy Way To Reduce The Level Of Terror

We certainly want to reduce the level of terror,
certainly not escalate it. There is one easy way to do
that and therefore it is never discussed. Namely stop
participating in it. That would automatically reduce
the level of terror enormously. But that you can't
discuss. Well we ought to make it possible to discuss
it. So that's one easy way to reduce the level of
terror.

Beyond that, we should rethink the kinds of policies,
and Afghanistan is not the only one, in which we
organize and train terrorist armies. That has effects.
We're seeing some of these effects now. September 11th
is one. Rethink it.

Rethink the policies that are creating a reservoir of
support. Exactly what the bankers, lawyers and so on
are saying in places like Saudi Arabia. On the streets
it's much more bitter, as you can imagine. That's
possible. You know, those policies aren't graven in
stone.

And further more there are opportunities. It's hard to
find many rays of light in the last couple of weeks
but one of them is that there is an increased
openness. Lots of issues are open for discussion, even
in elite circles, certainly among the general public,
that were not a couple of weeks ago. That's
dramatically the case. I mean, if a newspaper like USA
Today can run a very good article, a serious article,
on life in the Gaza Strip...there has been a change.
The things I mentioned in the Wall Street
Journal...that's change. And among the general public,
I think there is much more openness and willingness to
think about things that were under the rug and so on.
These are opportunities and they should be used, at
least by people who accept the goal of trying to
reduce the level of violence and terror, including
potential threats that are extremely severe and could
make even September 11th pale into insignificance.
Thanks.

Noam Chomsky's new book, 9/11, is available in e-book
format and in print from Seven Stories Press.



=====
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*  Hasan Zaidi                               *
*  #15, Qasr-e-Zainab,                       *
*  Club Road, Karachi, Pakistan.             *
*  E-mail: [log in to unmask]                 *
*  Tel:(+92-303)724 4369 / (+92-333)213 6564 *
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