Although Islámic and other religious terrorisms cannot be tolerated by the international community, talk of a war on terrorism puts the cart before the horse. Our primary focus should be on the root causes of religious terrorism, not on its violent consequences.



Rather than a war on global terrorism, our first fight must be a war on global poverty through international socialism. Secondly, we must struggle against the forces of nationalism and establish a universal federal, rather than unitary, system of global governance.



Once basic human needs are satisfied and the nation is subordinated to a global state, the blight of terrorism, which thrives under the banes of economic oppression and ethnic inequality, will be mostly eliminated.



A case in point is the contemporary apartheid between Israel and Palestine where, reminiscent of both the ghettoization of the European ancestors of many of the Israelis and of the previous establishment of racial homelands in South Africa, the building of white collar settlements in underclass occupied territories continues largely unabated.



While Islámic terrorism is never excusable, it is, given the cultural imperialism or hegemony of the West, explainable. In the current climate of globalization, which misuses the universalistic spirit of the age to justify the expansion of global markets and to satisfy capitalist greed, terrorism is frequently directed at perceived symbols of the military-industrial complex.



Good and evil are matters of degree, not political typologies. They exist in all of us, and in all countries. However, the contemporary bifurcation of the world into good and evil, recalling references to the former Soviet Union as the evil empire, ignores the extent to which injustice, or domestic terrorism, is tolerated in one of the Western world's most corrupt nations, the United States.



American terrorism takes such forms as opportunistic and ever-shifting foreign policies, the imposition of particularistic U.S. values and cultural constructs of freedom on the global South and other poor nations, and a market-driven medical establishment which leaves many of its own citizens with inadequate, sometimes nonexistent, health care.



If our planet had a just, socialized global economy, religious terrorism would take care of itself. Unfortunately, our present war against, largely Islámic fundamentalist or Wahabbí, terrorist agencies, while of some benefit, is, precisely because of what it fails to address, an insult to the majority of the earth's peoples and to their rights to economic and political equity.



In the specific case of Afghanistan, its liberation from al-Qa'ída and the Taliban was simply a byproduct of the so-called war on terrorism. U.S. Administrative compassion was little more than political expediency. Moreover, al-Qa'ída (neo-Wahabbism) would never have come to dominate the Taliban had it not been for that country's abandonment by the U.S. (and the West in general).



In December 2001, Bill O'Reilly, the ugly American "star" of Fascist Fox (Fox News Channel, in the U.S.), said to an Afghan official, "Americans don't care about who governs Afghanistan. We just want to get Usama bin Lawdin." Passing Larry King Live, on CNN, Fox's The O'Reilly Factor has become the most popular American cable news program.



As long as the world's only superpower, the U.S., is allowed to dictate the shape of world order, its character will likely remain unstable.