After the attack it was Christmas every day for the national security establishment and its corporate cohorts. All their wish lists were fulfilled, and then some. In short order, they massively increased defense spending; shamelessly stifled social spending; pro-moted obscenely extensive tax breaks for the largest corporations; greatly increased surveillance and prosecutory powers over the citi-zenry, including license to enter their homes virtually at will, to an extent a dictatorship might envy; tore up the Bill of Rights for non-citizens, including legal residents; created a new Office of Homeland Security; launched efforts to cut back on environmental legislation; unilaterally abrogated a leading arms control treaty; announced plans to expand the American Empire, under the rubric of an anti-terrorism crusade , to Iraq, Somalia, North Korea, and Sudan, amongst others; and a great deal more.

Many critics of the bombing campaign, who were in vulnerable positions, suffered consequences: a number of university teachers who had spoken out against the war lost their positions or were publicly rebuked by school officials, high-school students were suspended for the same reason, the only member of Congress who voted against the Authorization for Use of Military Force received innumerable threats and hate mail; and so it went.

The fruit of the foregoing is a police state, not the worst police state in the world to be sure, but a police state nonetheless; the War on Drugs had made it such even before September 11.

One of the prime motivations behind this assault on civil liberties is very likely the elites deep-seated desire to rid themselves of the scourge of the anti-globalization movement. In the new anti-terrorism law (the USA PATRIOT Act )-rushed through the legislative process before almost any member of Congress could even read the lengthy text-acts that appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion can be categorized as terrorism ; with great danger not only to the individual arrested, but also to his or her group and to those who have contributed to the group. All will be under serious threat of having their worldly assets confiscated, at a minimum.

How many young people are going to put their future at such great risk? How many organizations are going to risk losing everything?

Who knew what when?

Unsurprisingly, numerous reports have surfaced since September 11 which raise questions about the official version of events; reports concerning the CIA meeting with Osama bin Laden in July 2001 in a Dubai hospital; Israels Mossad being behind it all or at least having had intelligence about the attacks in advance and not sharing it, so that Americans could see what Israel goes through with terrorists; the failure of air safety and air defense systems to carry out long-standing, well-practiced, routine procedures and shoot down the second and third planes, perhaps deliberately choosing not to do so; substantial insider trading shortly before the attacks based on the expectation that the

stocks of American and United Airlines would plunge along with their planes; US covert meetings with and support of the Taliban for years; the ties between the Bush family and the bin Ladens; and much more. 18 Theres enough there to feed researchers and publishers for years to come. But it is beyond the capacity of this essay to explore the questions raised in anything approaching the depth some of them deserve.

I can only add my own speculative analysis to the already weighty pile. It strains credulity to believe that the FBI, CIA, NSA, et al. were unaware, at least in some detail, that a significant terrorist operation in the United States was in the offing; and as wild as that operation turned out to be, its nature could not have been unthinkable by these agencies, for in February 2000, in Israel, at the First International Conference on Defense Against Suicide Attacks, the CIA had received specific warnings that terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols in the United States. 19 Moreover, a terrorist arrested in the Philippines in 1995 revealed his groups plan to hijack small planes, fill them with explosives, and crash them into the CIA and other US government targets.20

Two or three of the hijackers were on an FBI watch list. According to FBI sources, in virtually every case in which the FBI has prevented a terrorist attack, success depended on long-term investigations, whose hallmarks were patience and letting terrorist plots go forward. You obviously want to play things out so you can fully identify the breadth and scope of the conspiracy. Obviously, the most efficient and effective way to do that is to bring it down to the last stage. 21

They may have waited one stage too long.

Although theres very little that one should rule out as being morally beyond the American powers-that-be, I dont think they would have allowed what happened to happen if they had known exactly what and when it was going to be. Certainly, the Pentagon would not have permitted its own home and personnel to be so savagely violated. It remains inevitable, however, that the fact of so much of the elites wish lists being fulfilled in the wake of September 11 is guaranteed to fuel further conspiracy theories.

Is this any way to end terrorism?

The American bombing of Afghanistan may well turn out to be a political train wreck. Can it be doubted that thousands throughout the Muslim world were emotionally and spiritually recruited to the cause of the next Osama bin Laden by the awful ruination? That is to say, the next generation of terrorists. Indeed, in December, while the American bombs were still falling on Afghanistan, a man-British citizen Richard Reid, who was a convert to Islam-tried to blow up an American Airlines plane en route to the United States with explosives hidden in his shoes. At the London mosque that Reid had attended, the cleric in charge warned that extremists were enlisting other young men like Reid and that agents aligned with radical Muslim figures had stepped up recruiting efforts since September 11. The cleric said that he knew of hundreds of Richard Reids recruited in

Britain. Reid, described in the press as a drifter , reportedly traveled to Israel, Egypt, the Netherlands, and Belgium before arriving in Paris and boarding the American Airlines plane.22 This raises the question of who was financing him. It seems that the recent freezing of numerous bank accounts of alleged terrorist groups throughout the world by the United States may have rather limited effect.

Americans do not feel any more secure in their places of work, in their places of leisure, or in their travels than they did the day before their governments bombings began.

Has the power elite learned anything? Heres James Woolsey, former director of the CIA, speaking in December in Washington, advocating an invasion of Iraq and unconcerned about the response of the Arab world: the silence of the Arab public in the wake of Americas victories in Afghanistan, he said, proves that only fear will re-establish respect for the U.S. 23

What, then, can the United States do to end terrorism directed against it? The answer lies in removing the anti-American motiva-tions of the terrorists. To achieve this, American foreign policy will have to undergo a profound metamorphosis, as the contents of this book testify.

If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize to all the widows and orphans, the tortured and impoverished, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. Then I would announce, in all sincerity, to every corner of the world, that Americas global interventions have come to an end, and inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the USA but henceforth-oddly enough-a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims. There would be more than enough money. One years military budget of $330 billion is equal to more than $18,000 an hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.

Thats what Id do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, Id be assassinated.

Washington, DC, January 2002 Notes

1 Guardian (London), December 19, 2001, article by Duncan Campbell

2 US Department of Defense, Defense Science Board, The Defense Science Board 1997 Summer Study Task Force on DOD Responses to Transnational Threats, October 1997, Final Report, Vol. 1, can be found in full at http: www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/trans.pdf. The part quoted is on page 15 of the report (page 31 of the pdf online version)

3 New York Times, March 26,1989, p. 16