I should say from the start that this column is not intended to be a direct response to the pieces "Calls for Peace Unpatriotic" and "Fighting the Pacifist Mindset," which appeared in last week's issue of The Student. Regardless of where we stand in this debate over the United States' "war against terrorism," we should all be in agreement on this point: there are far more serious questions to examine right now than that of who among us is a "patriot" and who isn't; there is more serious work to be done than drawing lines between the "pro-Americans" and the "anti-Americans." Engaging such trivial and unnecessarily divisive discussion distracts us from thinking about what is really important-what our country has to do to prevent future violence against innocent people, whether that violence takes the form of heinous attacks like those of Sept. 11, economic sanctions against foreign countries which ravage their civilian populations, or the racist persecution of Muslims and Arab-Americans here in the United States.

The attacks of Sept. 11 on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were horrific, sickening acts of mass murder about which we are justifiably outraged. It is absolutely necessary that the criminals behind the attacks be punished to the fullest extent of international law. It is equally necessary that no more civilian lives be destroyed in the process of identifying and apprehending these criminals. This cannot happen if the United States pursues military retaliation against Afghanistan. It is impossible for U.S. military action, no matter how narrowly restricted its targets are to "terrorist camps," not to have disastrous consequences for the Afghan civilian population. There have, as of yet, been no bombings or military strikes against Afghanistan in response to Sept. 11, but the Afghan population is already suffering from the escalating military conflict-Pakistan has cut off Afghanistan's food aid, and the country's U.N. relief workers have been evacuated. If we persist in seeking "justice" through military action, this "justice" will continue to come at the expense of numerous Afghan civilians, who undoubtedly won't be counted by CNN or NBC among the official casualties of war.

The student anti-war movement has been wrongly characterized as a movement that doesn't stand for anything. This has to be made clear: we do stand for the elimination of terrorism. War and militarism, however, are not the means to achieve that goal. State-sponsored violence may succeed in destroying individual "terrorists," but it can't destroy "terrorism," which is a tactic used by fanatical extremists who exploit the desperation and anger of their communities to further their own violent objectives. If the U.S. is to counteract terrorism, it must aim to cut off the flow of recruits to extremists like Osama bin Laden. That means examining the root causes of terrorism-the conditions which make it possible for people like bin Laden to enlist people in his genocidal campaign-and acting with the rest of the peace-minded international community to change those conditions. It is impossible to talk about eliminating terrorism without talking about changing the environment in which terrorism flourishes. That is why U.S. efforts to make the world safe from terrorism should not take the form of military action: war may or may not help us get at the specified "bad guys," but it definitely will reinforce the environment under which extremist ideas gain support in the first place.

The struggle against terrorism must be a struggle for global peace and global economic and social justice. To say that two of the underlying causes of terrorism are economic injustice and oppression is in no way an attempt to justify the mass murders of Sept. 11 or to shift the blame for them to the U.S. government. The only people responsible for the gross loss of life that day are the criminals who orchestrated the attacks. But if our goal as a nation is to prevent future violence against innocent people here and abroad, we have to question whether the way the U.S. conducts its foreign policy furthers or hinders that goal. Until very recently, the U.S. supported the reactionary, repressive Taliban government in Afghanistan-just four months ago, U.S. officials announced that Washington was giving $43 million to the Taliban for its role in reducing the cultivation of opium poppies. The U.S. continues to support an authoritarian and oppressive regime in Saudi Arabia. What does this have to do with terrorism? Everything. We can't hope to stop terrorism and continue to provide the military, economic and diplomatic backing which helps make oppression of Middle Eastern populations possible, creating widespread desperation and anger for extremists like bin Laden to exploit. If our nation's goal is to prevent future violence against innocent people and create security, we have to become part of an international coalition of peace-minded forces instead of continuing to ally ourselves with practitioners of violence. There is no such thing as security in a world in which acts of violence are answered with stronger acts of violence-this just perpetuates the cycle of destruction of which innocent people, as we witnessed on Sept. 11, are always the victims.