We'll never understand the world political situation and America's part in it, I believe, until we dump out all the bins in our heads and come up with a new logic.

Here's why - as I see it - the W.O.T. concept is fatally flawed, and why it drives misguided foreign policies and military expeditions.

1. It's not a war. There's no opposing army - paid, sponsored, and controlled by any sovereign state. No war has been mutually declared, there was no beginning, and there will be no definite conclusion. It can't be "won," in the usual sense of the word. But American government leaders and news producers are fond of declaring war on abstract nouns - inflation, poverty, drugs, crime, and now terrorism. Chasing renegades house to house is not a war, however much we crave a concrete something or somebody to go to war with.

2. Iraq and Afghanistan are not wars. They're uninvited military occupations - failing ones, as it happens. They've generated skillful armed resistance, as all occupations do. Few Western political leaders seem to understand the powerful motivating effect that a Christian army, invading a Muslim territory, can have on the people who live there. The fighting, killing, and dying are direct consequences of the occupation.

3. Terrorism is not an ideology - it's a behavior, engaged in for specific reasons by specific groups who seek specific political goals. The willingness to murder innocent people is embedded in certain political ideologies, but it's not enough to qualify as a political ideology in itself. In other words, terrorism is one way of getting results, but it's not an agenda.

4. 9-11 was not about America. It was an audacious attempt by Osama bin Laden to establish himself as a revolutionary leader in the eyes of the disaffected Arab masses. He was striving to become the Simon Bolivar, the Fidel Castro, the Che Guevara of the Middle East. To gain that legendary status, he needed "street cred." If he could pull off a spectacular terrorist operation against the richest and most powerful nation of all - especially a non-Islamic "infidel" culture - then he could threaten the leaders of any Arab regime, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Syria. It worked: after the 9-11 attacks, he became a world figure overnight, and a hero to many Arabs who felt oppressed and exploited by their national governments.

5. In typical Americentric fashion, US political leaders and newsbakers conjured up a Hollywood-style adventure story, with America as the focus and target of a "world-wide terrorist movement." They were out to get us, because they hated us, they hated what we stood for, and they resented our affluent living styles. They were coming after us.

6. One 9-11 was all bin Laden needed. The operation succeeded spectacularly, probably beyond his wildest hopes. Just one hit would probably have served his purpose. The 9-11 attackers were well organized, but they also might have been incredibly lucky. Americans went into a paranoid phase and braced for the inevitable "next attack." Nearly a decade went by without one. For those who clung to the W.O.T. story, the only explanation was that the newly amalgamated Department of Homeland Security must be so effective that it prevented or thwarted every subsequent terrorist plot. Every threat incident, such as the infamous "shoe bomber," was taken as evidence of the spreading menace of "global terrorism."

7. All terrorism is local - all of it. Just as consumer markets are segmented, political "markets" are segmented. Terrorism is theater: every terrorist incident is staged to get and hold the attention of a particular target population, often a ruling political clique, and very often the people on the street whose behavior the rulers must consider. People in Arab countries have been murdering their neighbors, cousins, clan members, and other clans for a thousand years or more. Only a narcissistic American world view could conjure up the idea that the individual dramas playing out there are really all about us. They became all about us only when the presence of US occupying forces created a focus for their attention. When the occupying forces are inevitably withdrawn, they'll go back to killing one another.

8. From the days of the Roman Empire, all foreign military occupations have died - some sooner than others. History offers no credible example in which a conventional foreign military force has prevailed in an asymmetrical conflict with a highly motivated indigenous resistance. Britain in the American colonies; Spain in Mexico, Latin America, and Cuba; Britain in India; Britain in Afghanistan; France in Algeria, and later in Vietnam; America in Vietnam; Russia in Afghanistan - all eventually fizzled when the occupations became too costly. America's trillion dollar adventure into Iraq and Afghanistan will ultimately meet the same fate. After the troops come home, what has been accomplished?

9. Part of the Hollywood-style W.O.T. story that transfixes and entertains Americans is the notion that we're being infiltrated by terrorist "sleeper cells." These are presumably sponsored and controlled by some monolithic ideology that doesn't require much of an organizational structure. They're lurking in their cheap apartments, in middle-class neighborhoods all across American cities. Living on pizzas and Big Macs, they're waiting for the signal from afar, upon which they'll all rise and wreak havoc on the American way of life. It certainly seems that, almost a decade after the 9-11 attacks, we'd be seeing their handiwork. There are lots of easy targets in an open society such as America: public buildings, bridges, rail lines, shopping malls, churches, reservoirs, airports, sport stadiums - the list is nearly endless. One would hope the members of the cells have found regular jobs; otherwise, somebody has been paying a lot of money to keep them sitting idle.

10. Terrorists are not new to America. For two centuries or more, disaffected fanatics have been blowing things up, to call attention to their favorite causes and ideologies. From John Brown at Harper's Ferry to Timothy McVeigh at Oklahoma City, we've been living with terrorists. We'll probably see more of them as the population of alienated loners keeps growing. But one or more terrorists of Middle Eastern extraction do not necessarily equate to a global terrorist movement. Fanatical Islamists certainly do exist, and while they may share many values antagonistic to Western-Christian cultures, let's remember that there are some 70 major versions of Islam, many of which are violently opposed to one another. Arab societies and Islamic groups are notoriously fragmented and factionalized; they haven't even been able to gang up on Israel, a nation they unanimously despise.

The new logic for the new world, it seems to me, goes back to bread and Pepsi. Food and fun can do more - at less cost - to pacify a population than bullets and bombs. A massive investment to create economic opportunity, infect the at-risk cultures of the Middle East with modern commercial and consumerist aspirations, and promote educational opportunities that elevate the status of women to full social equality, could have a far greater return on investment than the ruinously expensive military occupations. A trillion dollars, as they say, can go a long way.