Bush and his administration are playing on people's fears. The most effective way of dealing with terrorist organisations has been, for centuries, through recruiting informers or penetrating into the organisation. That's what the British have done. Through effective police work, they foiled a very dangerous attack. This needs to be emphasised: that preventing terrorism requires a small team that is specialised and knows what it is doing -- and not a blunt instrument like the Homeland Security concept, with more than a million people each wanting to catch terrorists. They have not caught too many.

The 9/11 attacks created fear, and the administration exploited that fear for its own purposes. I argued in The Bubble of American Supremacy that 9/11 was exploited by the Bush administration to gain uncritical acceptance for policies that were endangering open society at home and threatening peace and stability in the world.

Photograph: Robert Giroux/Getty Images Also read: 9/11: The Survivors

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