ABSTRACT
Two requirements governed my initial thinking about an appropriate response to the attacks of 11 September: first, the urgent need for effective action by the US Government that would greatly reduce the threat of future mega-terrorist incidents; and, second, the necessity of recognizing the appropriate legal, moral, and political limits that apply to waging such a defensive war. Since 12 September, I have grown increasingly concerned with the gross mishandling of this response pattern, especially the blending of a necessary response to a persisting mega-terrorist threat with the intensification of a pre-existing American empire-building project of global proportions. Because the territorial parameters of warfare seem of secondary importance in understanding and evaluating both of these dimensions of American policy it seems appropriate to identify the originality of this multi-layered globalism by resorting to the admittedly slippery terminology of post-modernism.
