The news of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York yesterday leaves one stunned at the complexity of the act and benumbed by the death of so many people. There will be a great many analyses of this event over the years to come and, it is likely that, one day, we will know a great deal about the people who organized the 'bombing' of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Right now, we have little more than outrage and anger to guide us in our understanding. In the sections to follow, I will make as few assumptions as possible...I assume that the group responsible is one sponsored or at least tolerated by any one of two dozen governments in the Mid-East who have cause to dislike, intensely, the policies of the US government in the region. It well may be that the chief architect of this act of guerrilla warfare may be the guerrilla chief known as Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian living in Afghanistan he has the funds, the experience and the will to organize it.

The Afghanistan government has denied the possibility of bin Laden involvement...saying that all of his communications equipment has been taken away. I doubt very much if it were any group within Palestine itself...they are focused on Israel...not the USA.  It turns out that bin Laden has endeared himself to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan by arming and fighting with them in the war against the Soviet Union in the 1980's...and it turns out that the USA armed and advised the Taliban and bin Laden in that war....and many in the US government took delight in a pay-back for Soviet support of Vietnam where the US lost thousands of soldiers and billions of dollars...all for nought.

I have organized this mini-lecture/analysis into five parts the social psychology of terrorism; the social organization of terrorism; the political economy of terrorism; the social base of the attack and, finally, the long-range effects of the act.

Before I start, I want to emphasize that both this awful event and the short-term response by the US government is and will continue to be pre-theoretical vengeance and revenge. The bombing of the Trade Center and the Pentagon will not produce the policy changes desired by its the Bin Laden Group; nor will revenge in turn reduce the kind and amount of terrorism to which the USA is exposed. Reason for this statement will emerge in the analysis below.

The Social Psychology of Terrorism. Many of thes of US leaders use a highly charged, medical analysis of the people who hi-jacked the plane and guided it into the twin towers of the Center. Madness, psychosis, religious fanaticism, dementia, as well as jealousy, envy and a need for self assertion...all have been central to the comments of both politicians and reporters yet there is another social psychology which, I believe, is more helpful to a sociological understanding of the act.

Think about it. You are a young man in an Islamic society who has been angry for years at the way in which the US and its allies have acted in the Mid-East...and you have been invited to join a group, invested in the firm belief that the USA and Europe are corrupting the morals of the whole world; drugs, alcohol, pornography and a privatized sexuality of ever younger boys and girls all offend the teachings of social life to which you are dedicated. The emergence of women's liberation also offends the teachings of Islamic society...and the USA is one of leading centers for the new gender politics. This is anathema to Islamic men.

And think too that being religious in Islam is far different from being religious in Europe or America...one prays to Allah five times a day; praying for guidance, for relief from personal flaws and prayer for the welfare of all of one's community.  Five times a day; not once a week on a Sunday.  And remember too, that if you are such a young man, you will have heard all your life of the many sins of the US government....not the people but the government of the USA:

   1.  The US has supported authoritarian regimes...usually a few families which enjoy all the wealth produced by oil in the mid-East...while most Muslims stay in poverty.  The Koran teaches that this wealth must be distributed to the poor, the orphan, widows and the community.

    2.  The US has used military force to oppose liberation movements--both socialist and Islamic--in the poorest countries in the world...all for the sake of oil and/or access to raw materials to run the economic machine in the richest country in all of history.

    3.  US culture offers, in your view, pornography, alcohol, sexual license, crime and drugs as a model for your brothers and sisters.

    4.  US troops are in Saudi Arabia...where two of the most sacred sites in Islam are found.  Americans would be equally offended if Soviet soldiers were stationed around the Washington monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the White House and the Capitol building of the USA.

    5.  US military are, presently, bombing and killing hundreds of citizens in Afghanistan using high tech weaponry against the poorest country in the area; a country crippled by 20 years of war; by millions of land mines left by the Soviets and by a melange of war lords fighting in what is called the "Northern Alliance," a neutral term to cover men who are thought to be robbers, rapists and murderers by those who know the history of the area.

Unlike the young men in Palestine who wrap explosives around their bodies and kill a few people, you have a chance for revenge against the three icons of American dominance of the Islamic world: the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the White House. And you have the silent support of Islamic peoples from the Philippines to Morocco.

Then you are put into a small group whose working assumption is that one gains eternal honor by serving as the agent of destruction of the western 'devils'.

These are powerful social-psychological drives for acts of self-destruction of such young men. Bravery, courage, honor and sacrifice for a 'higher' cause are elements of a social psychology which have driven small bands of males to warfare for centuries.

Other members of your team become your friends and honored companions in a labor which will earn you eternal glory...you not only join but you are eager to join and to help wreak vengeance on the Western Devil' You leave your country an are isolated with several dozen people all of whom accept; none of whom challenge your working assumptions.

Your social psychology is not private madness but one of a determined revenge for 'wrongs' engineered by the West for the past century or more anchored in a social base which you cherish as 'your people.'

The Social Organization of Terrorism. In the case of the Trade Center, it appears that there was/is a fairly large organization which engineered the bombing. There were at least four teams which took over the airplanes...probably of four or five members each. Then there had to be a central team based on land to coordinate the attacks after the hi-jacking. This means that there were from 30 to 50 members of a highly secretive group which inflitrated the USA over the months or weeks before 11 September, 2001.

The training of the teams probably took place in one of several camps scattered over the Mid-East...at least one member of each crew had to be instructed in piloting air-craft...the hi-jack teams could not depend upon US pilots to fly their planes and passengers into the towers or the pentagon. This means a whole cadre of support personnel at the camp; cooks, instructors, guards, technicians and a leadership as well. At least 100 or perhaps 200. All of these people had to be known by government officials of the host country...just as the USA sponsored anti-Cuban guerrillas in Central America with the full knowledge of the Guatemalan government, the host government could not but know of the group...if not the specific plan.

The Political Economy of Terrorism. The Choice of the Pentagon and the World Trade towers as target are leading clues to the political economy which forms the larger socio-political context in which the events emerged.

The Twin Towers and surrounding buildings are the heart of a vast world political economy dominated/orchestrated by the USA. The Pentagon is the heart of a great military establishment with bases around the world.

The short version of all this is that there are some 86 essential raw materials in countries around the world which are needed to drive the American Economy. Oil is the central one; factories, the automobile industry and the chemical/plastics industry in Europe, Japan and the USA could not survive without oil from the Mid-East.

And in the Far East, in Latin America and in North Africa, there is cheap labor with which American corporations can employ in the textile, electronic and publishing industry to produce raw materials for Sears, Wards, Wal-mart, K-Mart and a hundred well known brand names worn/used by Americans without a thought to the girls and boys; men and women who work in abysmal conditions to produce higher profits for American corporations.

There is also a micro-political economy which fuels much of the Islamic anger directed at the USA involving Israel and Palestine.

Land and Labor in the Palestine

Israel is a small pawn in this larger world trade which brings oil and other essential materials to the West. For years, it provided the only 'friendly' base for American 'interests' in the Mid-East. Those interests were and are oil to fuel America cars; oil to generate American energy; Oil to provide American products and oil to drive American factories.

Israeli needs the protection of the USA in a region hostile to its very existence. The USA has supplied Israel with planes, missiles, guns, training and billions of dollars over the past 30 years. These military goods are used against Palestinian/Islamic Arabs.

Central to the tragedy of the Holy Land is the slow acquistion of Palestinian land by Israeli settlers. I visited for a while on a Kibbutz in Israel and came to understand the political economy which drives the continuing hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians. Land tenure among the Palestinians has been traditional....families 'own' vaguely demarcated farm and grazing lands....Israelis brought European notions of land tenure with specific bounded ownership of every acre. Since there has been no deeds nor recording of deeds, it appears to Israelis that land is 'unowned.' To Palestinians, they know, generation by generation, who has use and usufruct to the land...and, in some cases, elders in a village apportion grazing rights for a year or for years...people know this without formal title or state records.

And because of its immigration policy, there is a continuing, pressing need to open new settlements for Jews....Jews fleeing from oppression all over the world.  The State of Israel was established to be a Jewish homeland.  Jews from Russia; Jews from Yemen; Jews from Poland and Jews from Argentina have all found welcome, jobs, housing and security from racial/ethnic/religious hatred.  It is part of the tragedy of tribal religions that one tribe can claim, with divine sanction, the right to oppress and dislodge those whose beliefs arise out of a different sense of the Holy.

In this case, that point bends as much on Israelis as upon the followers of Islam...and doubly so upon the hawks of Washington who use the language of religion to justify the death of those in Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua and now, Afghanistan.

There are better ways to do religion.

It is this discrepancy in ideas of land tenure which drives much of the tension between Israel people and Islamic people everywhere. Then too, there is the military superiority of the Israelis which is used to enforce policies and occupations unpopular to Palestinians. Finally there are the labor policies...Palestinians are used as a surplus labor reserve by Israelis much as Germany uses...and discriminates against...immigrant Turks or USA farmers and businesses use Mexican migrants as a cheap labor source.

The Social Base of Terrorism. There is a larger social base which supports the destruction of the Twin Towers and another social base which is deeply offended by the deed.

In poor countries around the world, there will be something approaching jubilation at the news of the destruction of these two symbols of Western domination of the world and of world culture. For many people, a sort of grim, unspoken satisfaction will serve; for others, public displays of delight at the death of thousands of persons will be seen.

In most of Europe as in the USA, horror, shock, anger and outrage will flow from the people.

There are reasons from the emergence of these two very different emotions in two very different social bases.

On the one hand there are some 20 wealthy countries which benefit from world trade; on the other, there are some 120 poor and poorer countries which see the wealth of the country extracted and shipped off to the wealthy countries. European countries and the USA as well as Japan import food from the poorest, weakest and hungriest countries in the world. Men and women in Latin America and Central America see their children go hungry as beef is shipped to MacDonald's, to Wendy's, to Arby's and to Burger King. Strawberries, tomatoes, coffee and street drugs use the best land in a poor country....and these agricultural products go by plane, ship, train and truck North to the USA...while government officials get rich and those who grow and sell become wealthy. Income gaps widen and social unrest grows...in this context, the bombing of strangers in the North seems to be some kind of justice.

And, the choice of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are mute testimony to the relevance of an analysis of the sources of this new phase of global economics.  The World Trade Center symbolizes the economic hegemony of the West over Islamic countries.   The choice of the Pentagon is emblematic of outrage against the use of US military around the world to enforce the uneasy peace of trade and profit.

ShortTerm Effects of the Trade Center Tragedy. From the point of view of the engineers of the destruction of the World Trade Center, revision of American Policy in Israel and the Mid-East is desirable. This is, in the short term, unlikely.

More likely is the identification and destruction of the group which trained and supplied the terrrorist teams. This means US bombing of one or more terrorist bases in the Mid-East and a growing hostility to US interests in Islamic countries around the world.

Not a happy result but one to which the American people and the Bush Administration has committed itself.

It well may be the case that European countries will mediate both short-term and long term effects of the bombing but...as long as the gap between wealthy and poor countries in the world grow; as long as non-Christians, especially Islamic peoples, are exploited and targetted by US military, the future is not promising for world peace...terrorism will continue to be the tactics of necessary by peoples too poor and to weak to use high tech weaponry.

They will continue to use make-do weapons with which to register their outrage. And Americans, uneducated in the larger political economy in which terrorists and terrorism thrives, will continue to re-act with pre-theoretical anger and outrage.