The perpetrators of the Sept. 11 atrocities are, as Bush says, a global menace that must be stopped. He is also correct in calling for multinational intelligence, financial, police (not fascist, one insists), and diplomatic measures directed against the terrorist network.

But in calling for a military response, Bush embarks on a dangerous venture that may inflict great injury on us and the world. What he does not — or will not — recognize is that the ONLY way to end terrorism is by eliminating its root causes and by taking steps to bring terrorists to justice at the Hague or in U.S. courts through international cooperative efforts — a process most of the Muslim world would willingly, even eagerly, participate in. But a military response will not drain the swamp that incubates terrorist mosquitoes. Kill a thousand mosquitoes, another thousand will replace them.

Much of the Arab/Muslim world lives in a swamp of abject poverty while we enjoy the highest standard of living of any people in history, with the Arab world's petroleum playing no small role in our success. The economic chasm that divides the Middle East and the West provides fertile ground for envy and resentment and ever more terrorists, particularly in light of our indifference to their plight.

Many Muslims also resent our insistence that they become like us and adopt democratic governments and free trade and so on. They view what we see as progressive leadership as an arrogant American quest for hegemony that threatens the very foundations of their culture.

Perhaps our greatest blind spot is not recognizing (and conceding) that a major source of terrorism is the decades of our failed, self-aggrandizing Middle East policy. Our unexamined support of Israel results in our not dealing with the Arab and Israeli worlds with an even hand, although Middle East peace requires that the sovereignty of Israel AND Palestine is assured. The Arab world is acutely and passionately aware that both Israel and the United States have been murderous of and indifferent to Arabs. Thanks to our profit-obsessed and jingoistic media, the American people are ill informed:

•  Israeli soldiers are today literally luring Palestinian children and youth out to throw rocks and then murdering them in cold blood, with U.S.-supplied arms. (See the eyewitness report of a New York Times reporter in the October issue of Harper's Magazine.)

•  Israelis used American arms to kill 17,500 people, mostly civilians, in their invasion of Lebanon.

•  The Palestinians have for decades been an occupied people living in miserable conditions in refugee (concentration) camps in their ancestral lands. Their desperate children grow up dreaming of becoming terrorist martyrs, for that's all that life offers.

•  The United States was firmly allied to the monster Saddam Hussein while he was committing chemical genocide against his nation's own people, the Kurds, and we didn't say a word. It was only later, when he threatened our sources of oil, that we opportunistically turned against him.

•  The United States killed 70,000 Iraqis in the Gulf War, and our subsequent embargo has resulted in the death of more than a million civilians, mostly children, as former Secretary of State Albright concedes. (The killing of upwards of 7,000 on Sept. 11 was crime of incomprehensible proportions. What does one say about the deaths of more than 500,000 Iraqi children? Are they not important because they are not American children? Saddam Hussein, for his part, is using proceeds from exports of food and oil to purchase weapons of mass destruction, while Iraqi children starve.)

•  Bin Laden was trained and supplied by the CIA, as were many of the Taliban.

•  The United States is the largest seller of arms to the world, and soon our arms and training will, once again, be used against American military personnel.

This is not to say bestial atrocities have not been committed by the Arab world against Israelis. Nor is it to say that we should fear Muslim Americans, almost none of whom feel anything but loyalty to the United States. It is to say that American actions have caused, not without reason, deep-seated Arab distrust of this nation; and if we do not revamp our policies, the consequences may be horrific.

Muslim extremists are either in power or pose a significant threat to existing rulers in Pakistan, Egypt, Algeria, Iran, Turkistan, Uzbekistan, and Saudia Arabia. Any massive military operation by the United States would be seen by moderate Muslims/Arabs as further evidence of U.S. prejudice against them and would inflame the Muslim world. The B52s (carpet bombers) now being sent to the Middle East would, if used, ignite a wave of outrage in the Muslim world and probably topple more than one government. Consequently, for example, were Pakistan, with its atomic weapons, to fall to the strong fundamentalist movement there, Pakistan would be under the control of supporters of the Taliban, which has murdered probably thousands of women for infractions of religious (not criminal) law. The current Pakistani military regime seems particularly vulnerable.

Ned Harper is a professor of history at an area college.