That's how Marc Cooper titles his interview with Gore Vidal in this week's LA Weekly. Vidal, now 76, has spent his career arguing "tempestuously that the U.S. should retreat back to its more Jeffersonian roots, that it should stop meddling in the affairs of other nations and the private affairs of its own citizens. "

Mr. Vidal has a new book out, "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got To Be So Hated." He believes we should all know the answer to why September 11 and the Oklahoma City bombings happened. Our government caused them. "There is no action without a reaction." The action was our hubris abroad and our creation of a police state at home, says Vidal. The reaction was Osama's and Mr. McVeigh's attacks on America, provoked by their rage resulting from America's "reckless assaults on other societies."

According to Vidal, the reason we went to Afganistan after Sept. 11 was not to find Osama, but to make an imperial grab for energy resources. The Persian Gulf was our main source of oil and the Taliban were getting "flaky."

"We had planned to occupy Afghanistan in October, and Osama, or whoever it was who hit us in September, launched a pre-emptory strike. They knew we were coming. And this was a warning to throw us off guard."

There's more...it's an interesting read.