The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own Nation.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

As soon as the Bush administration declared a War on Terror, something disturbing happened: Dropping this verbal atomic bomb in response to the horror of September 11th, the United States, a world superpower, elevated a cult leader, mass murderer, and ideological fanatic -- Osama bin Laden and his band of fundamentalist clones -- to the status of a nation state. We gave an already infamous terrorist renewed credibility among his followers, a tremendous PR coup and continuing recruitment bonanza for Al Qaeda, dramatically increasing the threat and spread of terrorism. A highly contagious, barbaric cluster of ideas (the Islamic face of religious Fundamentalism) was given new life, empowered to infect additional millions, with its pathological agenda of hate and murder.

Like the perpetual War on Drugs, labeling our efforts to find a group of psychopaths a War on Terror was a plunge into a linguistic, bottomless pit, another potentially endless pursuit of an impossible goal. Moreover, these three, notorious words, similar to some corporate logo, appear everywhere, attached to every imaginable circumstance, creating all manner of serious, long-term consequences including justification for trampling on fundamental civil liberties, waging preemptive wars, fomenting a continuous state of public apprehension, alienating our long-term allies, and significantly increasing hatred, distrust and fear of the US. We had the civilized world on our side right after 9-11 but instead we managed to alienate important friends and allies around the world in a matter of months -- supreme arrogance and political stupidity!

Using verbiage dripping in Religious Right doctrine (the Christian face of religious fundamentalism), George W. continued his verbal hegemony in his State of the Union Address, declaring that America is a nation with a mission, and The cause we serve is right because it is the cause of all mankind. He had already stepped into another word nightmare when he labeled certain countries as belonging to a designated Axis of Evil, and Pentagon officials threatened to drain the Middle East swamp, self-righteous crusades that our God will help us accomplish. Never mind if thousands of innocent civilians are terrorized and murdered in the process. And, you and I need to remember that we, -- the United States -- according to George W. Bush, are called to bring Gods gift of liberty to every human being in the world. Again, classic cult language: we are the superior chosen people, outsiders are not. We now have a new mission that should keep us busy for the foreseeable future as well as insuring continued growth and expansion for the military-industrial complex -- good news and full employment for the Pentagon, Halliburton, weapons manufacturers and, of course, all manner of terrorists.

These verbal blunders and misdirected reactions also let loose some lethal group dynamics, fanning the flames of an ideological firestorm that already poses a very real threat to the civilized world. Furthermore, because of our war rhetoric response, we set ourselves up to be an even more irresistible target for terrorists. There is nothing more satisfying or exciting to a cult like Al Qaeda than an actual confrontation with the Great Satan, their designated enemy, a most useful tool for keeping a movement alive. Such groups cannot see their own faults; everything bad and evil is projected out there on an external foe; the cult is but a victim of oppression, not responsible for their circumstances or their self-destructive ideas and social policies. Because of this volatile group dynamic, how we react to evil becomes a determining factor in either escalating terrorism and hatred or reducing the threat of terrorism.

It is a group-think trap to rationalize and justify any form of terrorism with real or imagined grievances. To do so is to reward acts of terrorism, transforming savages and murderers into diplomats and heroes. We then become defacto supporters of this regressive, primitive, immoral logic which, if accepted, can, without a twinge of conscience or humanity, rationalize the most unspeakable evil to further the cults agenda.

From a fundamentalist, cult mind-set, a suicide bomber yearns for death and martyrdom as a passport into heaven or paradise. Thus death becomes an ultimate goal, a religious ideal to be attained. Suicide and murder for a twisted and perverted ideological organism become virtues; barbaric, spiritually ignorant individuals misunderstand and misinterpret allegorical stories and metaphors, whether in the Koran, Bible, Torah, or any other text. In a fundamentalist group, religious scriptures are taken as historical fact and acted upon accordingly. Such groups are, as author, Robert J. Lifton observed, always on the edge of violence because it (the fundamentalist group) ever mobilizes for an absolute confrontation with designated evil, thereby justifying any actions taken to eliminate that evil.

Meanwhile, the leaders of such groups never do what they encourage their followers to do. After all they, the Bin Ladens of the world, and other like-minded, criminal, cult leaders of terrorist groups, have discovered the cruelest, cheapest weapon of all: an endless supply of thoroughly brainwashed individuals who are expendable fodder for what is in reality a political cult masquerading as a religious group. The cult uses youthful idealism and naivet for its own ends. The serial murder of innocents in the dark factories of terrorism begins with young suicide bombers. For them, the cult and its bloodthirsty mission are more important than individual existence. It is a group-created psychosis, a wasteland utterly devoid of human compassion.

When we attacked Iraq, we again walked right into this same deadly group dynamic: by starting a war, essentially on our own, we fulfilled our role as the Great Satan in the minds of Islamic radicals, empowering and reinforcing their mass-pathological mission to destroy western civilization and replace it with a Moslem theocracy. A prominent Iranian ayatollah, a religious fundamentalist, made this mission quite clear: Moslems have no alternative . . . to an armed holy war against profane governments. . . . . It will . . . be the duty of every able-bodied adult male to volunteer for this war of conquest, the final aim of which is to put Koranic law in power from one end of the earth to the other. Radical Islamic fundamentalism is a rapidly spreading mental virus, an ideological cancer, and one of the oldest and most dangerous group dynamics; it is fast corrupting traditional Islamic values of compassion and mercy. The barbarians are not only at the gates of the civilized world, they are inside.

And by the way, now that Iraq has settled into an ongoing civil war, maybe we can muster enough real intelligence to catch Bin Laden and all his accomplices. You remember him; the guy with the AK-47, that cave-dwelling columnist for Al-Jazeerathe serial murderer actually responsible for the September 11th massacre. Bin Laden ought to be treated by the U.S. and the international community as the criminal and mass murderer that he is, nothing more and nothing less. A more sensible U.S. response following September 11th (then and now) would have been to organize a powerful and effective international alliance, a coordinated police action to track down each individual involved in the 9-11 tragedy.

When it comes to group dynamics, we are dangerously illiterate and naive. It may well be that we are condemned to repeat past horrors -- until we come to grips with the crucial necessity to educate ourselves about the often fatal effects of destructive groups and destructive ideologies. It is too often true that we are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverersthieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses.