opinion The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon can hardly ever be morally justified through any political philosophy or religious beliefs. The planners and perpetrators of the attacks knew well ahead the scale of devastation their assault would cause in terms of human lives.

The sheer sight of the airlines ramming against the buildings, as frequently being replayed by the American media, would certainly leave a mental scar not only on those living in the United States but those throughout the world as well.

Shortly after these incidents, an inevitable combination of rage and fear swept through the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Radio shows were inundated with calls from the public demanding revenge.

"We want blood!" cried one angry caller. "I know these Palestinians - their lifestyles are violent, they are violent people, especially their leader bin Laden," responded another, who despite portraying her ignorance, was not even corrected by the show host.

You see, the most damaging image was that the perpetrators had used American passenger jets to destroy the very symbols of American world supremacy - symbols that signify American capitalist strength and military might.

Top American political and military leaders came on air to 'assure' the American public that their demands are on the way. Immersed in nationalistic fervour, likened to the chants of "USA! USA!' at sporting events, no politician dared go against the tide lest his political career is jeopardised.

At the same time, fear of other attacks became justification for the scaling back of civil liberties, the very foundation on which this country had been built. National security now becomes the order of the day, any information on the arrests made becomes classified and any infringement on individual rights is done in the name of national interest.

Patriotic sentiments

As grim, macabre and desensitised as it sounds, there are winners and losers arising from such tragedies. The ones who have lost out most of course are those who have perished or have been seriously injured in the attacks.

As usual these victims are mostly working people; firefighters, police personnel, secretaries, janitors, office administrators, etc. Then there were the families and friends they have left behind, and who now bear the grief and pain of missing their loved ones.

But the repercussions have become more extensive. As a result of the media's overzealous and somewhat callous incitement of uncontrolled patriotic sentiments, specific groups have been targeted for reprisals. (CNN played a footage of Palestinians celebrating the tragedies - the authenticity of which is now questioned, and the event itself may have been some other occasion or the context within which it took place was not fully explained).

At the brunt of direct attacks have been Muslim and Arab Americans, who since that fateful Tuesday, have received a series of physical and verbal assaults from some sections of the American public.

Choked with emotions, a Muslim-American appealed on a radio show, "We are double victims. As Americans, we are pained by the tragedies. For me, my cousin is still unaccounted for and now we are singled out for abuse and assaults."

Yusuf Saleem, head of the Muslim American Society in Washington asserted, "We are also shocked and dismayed by the events, and dismayed especially that it should be associated with a religion that has only peace as its ultimate aim," adding, "We are a part of the fabric of America."

Despite President Bush's national address to stem the rising spate of hate-crimes against Muslims in America, anti-Islam and anti-Arab (the distinction of which many Americans still could not grapple), emotions continue to run high.

Brutal campaigns

On the other hand Israel, despite its half century-long brutal campaigns against Palestinian civilians, has managed to emerge in the minds of Americans as 'true allies'. A delighted former premier of Israel smirked on American TV as he implied Islam and Arabs as forces with which the world must come to terms.

By claiming to empathise with Americans through similar experiences of 'terrorist' attacks from Arab and Muslim groups, the Israeli leadership has managed to use the media as a forum to justify their apartheid rule as well as their occupation of Arab lands in south Lebanon and the West Bank.

Missing from the media festival of racists, warmongers, and nationalist zealots are those true experts on the Middle East, who could rationally analyse for the public, the factual circumstances leading to the tragedies.

Instead, such characters as the renowned anti-Islam journalist Judith Miller appeared on interviews. During her airtime, Miller managed to construct a profile of the 'Islamic' terrorist. Among other things, she attributed the terrorist's violent disposition to a sense of frustration emerging from the lack of democracy in the societies in which they lived.

Unsurprisingly absent from this explanation is the fact that such lack of freedom had been the very product of US foreign policy of installing or legitimising ruthless regimes in countries such as Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Egypt. Certainly, the conglomerate-owned mass media have been a useful tool, with which those in power could manipulate and distort reality in order to secure their advantages.

Those belonging to the 'far right' on the political spectrum can also come out as victors in these tragedies. Tighter securities, invasion of civil rights and freedom, and intense surveillance by the state can now be carried out at public expense in the name of national security.

Taxpayers' money will be responsible for these programmes (one ludicrous suggestion was the employment of a security guard on every flight) at the cost of expenditures for poverty alleviation, better education for the under-privileged, and services funding for the poor.

At the short end of the stick in America will be single-parent women, minorities, and the poor at large, of whom rural white Americans constitute the largest number. In times of national crisis involving nationalism and patriotism as a mobilising force of state action, the fact that one in every four American children are living in poverty will now be permanently entrenched at the bottom of policymaking priorities.

Frightened public

But what is national security and national defense? Political and military leaders want Americans to believe that programmes associated with 'missile defense' are crucial to the safeguarding of America's borders. Conveniently, silence surrounds the fact that the perpetrators of Tuesday's attacks used low-tech methods in carrying out their horrific acts. No nuclear missiles, no bombers, just knives.

Today's military leaders still live in yesterday's cold war era of conventional warfare. With Vietnam now forgotten, the American leadership has re-stimulated the idea that an expensive high-technology defence system is the only answer to terrorist attacks. Blinded by passionate patriotism, most Americans are not able to see the foolishness of this notion.

As professor Noam Chomsky said, "defence is a thin cover for plans for militarisation of space, and with good PR, even the flimsiest arguments will carry some weight among a frightened public."

Hence when political and military leaders suggested an attack on a foreign nation to avenge the deaths of Americans, 75 percent of those polled supported such a move. That this was decided despite not fully knowing the identity of the group responsible for the attacks was reprehensible.

The first step - a memorandum to Afghanistan to hand over the suspected Osama bin Laden. Failure to do so would entail a fiery assault from America's assortment of deadly arsenal of hi-tech weapons.

In spite of Afghanistan being a country so poor the World Bank has given up computing its gross national product, US military leaders continue to impress the public on the comparative military strengths of both countries.

The concern of the public however, is not how many children will die, but how many American soldiers can be saved. How could a nation of peace-loving people lose all sense of sanity to become oblivious of the fact that innocent civilians would be massacred in the process? Or do they matter?

Most Americans have never befriended any foreigner let alone Afghans. Nationalism has the tendency to compound the devastating effect of ignorance by making it easier to hate faceless groups than it is to hate known individuals. As such, American lives are placed with higher premiums than that of others.

Blank check

The New York and Washington DC attacks have been tragic not only for those who have suffered their direct consequences, but also for those in the rest of America and the world who are powerless, disenfranchised, and disconnected from the incidents. In the long run, the poor and oppressed are the ones who would have to pay most for these tragedies.

America's 'war on global terrorism' will become a blank check for any state apparatus to justify their continued subjugation of minorities and the oppression of the poor. There will be a frenzy of defence spending across the globe, with increasingly lacking concerns for poverty eradication programmes, children-centred policies, or environmental preservation.

The disparity gap between the rich and poor within and between countries will widen astronomically. Also, the act of state terrorism by powerful countries against helpless civilians will also proliferate. The use of nationalist sentiments to exploit the tragedies has become a tragedy in itself.

For, if responsible leaders are honestly bent on preventing similar attacks in the future, they must sit back and reassess on where their foreign policies have actually bungled into motivating others to carefully plan an attack on US soil.

Journalist Robert Fisk, whose knowledge of the Middle East has been unrivaled, writes that "this is not a war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is about American missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance, and American shells crashing into a village called Qana, and about a militia paid and uniformed by America's Israeli ally hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps."

A total stop to terrorism is not through missile defence, war on a nation, or the propagation of hatred via the media. Such acts are equally terrorist in nature.

It is time to construct a human dimension on political decisions, not those that pertain only to money or material wealth. It is time for the American leadership to start formulating US foreign policies based on justice, freedom, and equality, not on power, greed and profits.

AZLAN TAJUDDIN teaches sociology at the University of Tennessee in the United States.