Any person or state who gets in the way of the American Empire, beware!

A while ago, I heard a union person on the radio proposing what he called "a radical solution to poverty - pay people enough to live on".

I'd like to propose a radical solution to anti-American terrorism - stop giving terrorists the motivation to attack America.

Our leaders and often the media would have us believe that we're targetted because of our freedom, democracy, wealth, our modernity, secular government or just our simple goodness. George W. is still repeating these cliches long after 9-11 and he may believe it, but other officials have known better for some time.

A department of defence study in 1997 concluded, "Historical data show a strong correlation between US involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States".

The attacks are not going to end until we stop bombing innocent people and devastating villages and grand old cities. And they are not going to end until we stop supporting gross violators of human rights who oppress their people. We'll keep on adding to the security operations that are turning our society into a police state - and it won't make us much safer.

If I were the President, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologise - very publicly and very sincerely - to all the widows and orphans, the tortured and impoverished, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism.

Then I would announce that America's global interventions have come to an end and I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90 per cent and use the savings to pay reparations to our victims and repair the damage from our bombings. There would be enough money. Do you know that one year's military budget is equal to more than $US20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born?

That's what I'd do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I'd be assassinated.

Following its bombing of Iraq, the United States wound up with military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates; following its bombing of Yugoslavia, the United States wound up with military bases in Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia and following its bombing of Afghanistan, the United States is now winding up with military bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and perhaps elsewhere in the region.

Fifty-seven years after World War II ended, the US still has major bases in Germany and Japan and 49 years after the Korean War ended the US military is still in Korea.

Now the imperial mafia have their eyes on Iraq. If the US overthrows Saddam Hussein and installs a puppet government, as it did in Afghanistan, the American oil companies will move into Iraq and the American empire will acquire another country and a few more bases.

We've gone through many months now of a song-and-dance show that passes for debate about whether to attack a sovereign nation that has not attacked us, that knows it would mean instant mass suicide for them if they did.