than the Israeli press itself. The president of CNN thinks that too muchcoverage of Afghani civilian deaths may be inappropriate while our nation is atwar[22]. Now that is something to think about. Tounderstand terrorism does not mean to condone it, it only means that one islooking for the causes so that it will not happen again. And to look for the causes would take us toquestion the efficacy of fighting terrorism with a war. The U.S. could have also taken the stand ofrealizing what has fabricated such grievances. Of course, for a State that believes itself sovereign, maybe thatwould be too much to ask. It would be toask that the United States recognizes its role in the making of the Taliban,when the CIA recruited the most radicalIslamic fundamentalists from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other countries, and madethem believe that the best they could do with their future was to fight a holywar against the atheist socialists. To do this, of course, the U.S. could count on the fundamentalism ofWahhabiysm in Saudi Arabia. The U.S.then, for reasons of power and access to oil in the region, besides others,like war profit, trained and disciplined terrorists, and gave a sparklingstart to the rise of Islamic terrorist fundamentalism[23]. The reaction of Islamic people throughfundamentalization cannot be explained only in the light of religion; terrorism always has political causes, nomatter how religion-sponsored it is. September 11 was a joke compared to what the Afghanis suffered in thehands of terrorists produced by the U.S. and its oppressive ally, Pakistan. Not to see this is an ethnocentric andself-destructive way of thinking, the same that led the U.S. to think that itcan implement terror in the world and never suffer from it. And to the question of why the U.S.government would choose a war instead of following the international guidelinesfor the prosecution of crimes of this sort, there are many points fordiscussion: racism, imperialism, war profit and oil security, among otherfactors. Arab countries havebeen targeted for a long time as sites of colonial and imperialdomination. Since the Crusades a wordthat George Bush uttered only once referring to the war on terrorism and, forthis reason, was later reprimanded by his associates Arab territories havebeen targeted by the Western States either as a people to be conquered byBritish, French, etc...or as a place to be in direct alliance or confrontationwith for political-economic reasons. TheUnited States, in its imperialist manner so known around the world, has beenfostering friendly relations with the most hated dictatorships and monarchiesin the world, in exchange for their submission. It approved the rule of the Shah in Iran in the 80s, who devastatedthat country while he was living himself pretty well selling the country toU.S. corporations[24]. After the Iranian revolution, the U.S.conducted a terrorist operation. In 1988they shot down an Iranian passenger airliner, killing 290 people, and laterclaimed it was an accident[25]. The same claim was made when the U.S. bombedthe Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, in 1998. As Chomsky states in his book 9-11, the toll of people directlyaffected by this terrorist act is comparable to those that