Such conflict also is a major reason for the estimated 100,000 child soldiers in Africa as of 2004. Children are taken from their parents, likely after watching them die, and brainwashed into killers. They are given amulets their adult counterparts say will make them impervious to bullets, and forced to snort “brown,” a mixture of cocaine and gun powder, to get them high for battle.

Although De Beers maintains only 3 percent of global rough diamonds that come from conflict zones, journalist and diamond expert Christine Gordon estimates it’s as high as 10-15 percent. A U.N. report claimed “extremely lax regulations” are used to verify a diamond’s integrity at the world’s largest diamond exchange in Antwerp, Belgium. Partnership Africa Canada, a Canadian human rights group, called it “a diamond smuggler’s dream.”

Even if De Beers is right and there is only a small chance that a product is a conflict diamond, consumers are needlessly funding an industry that fuels terrorism. Americans are responsible for half the diamond sales in the world, so a consumer-led boycott would effectively show that, in this country, we don’t give our business to terrorists.

Reduce oil consumption by driving fuel-efficient cars, using public transportation, supporting alternative fuels or riding a bike. Not only is our oil-protecting military presence in the Middle East one of Osama bin Laden’s reasons for a 1998 call to Jihad, but we’re funding oppressive governments with ties to violent Islamic fundamentalists.

Tom Cutler, the former head of NATO’s Petroleum Planning Committee, said in the January 1989 issue of Armed Forces Journal International that “the military’s primary objective is to ensure adequate oil supplies for national defense.”

A December 2003 report by U.S. News & World Report stated the CIA discovered Osama bin Laden is largely funded not by personal wealth but rather by fundraising from Saudi Arabia, the third largest oil exporter to the U.S. Supporting a fundamentalist sect of Islam called Wahhabism, the country spent $70 billion from 1975-2002 on overseas aid, most of it on “Islamic activities,” according to the Center for Security Policy. This money went to building Islamic centers such as mosques devoted to the Wahhabi sect and produced a propaganda campaign that rivaled the soviets at the height of the Cold War. These acts, as well as many others, are likely linked to fertilizing extremist Muslims.

The money we spend on oil is going to governments that give it to terrorists — alternative fuels and fuel efficiency is a must for anyone who wants to do their part in stopping terrorism.

Demand political leaders who will not endorse a foreign policy that agitates and proliferates terrorist organizations. An April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate report called the Iraq invasion and the resulting insurgency the leading inspiration for Islamic extremists. Tell politicians you don’t want repeats of former President Ronald Reagan’s trading weapons for hostages or the CIA ousting Iran’s democratically elected leader to install a dictator, breeding the 1979 Islamic Revolution that inspired generations of anti-American sentiment.

The word “terrorism” is propaganda for politicians to legitimize massive bloodshed that only makes us less safe, but it is real and we can abstain from supporting it. The question we have to ask ourselves is whether we really want to fight terrorism, or just make ourselves feel like we’re fighting it.

Drew Robert Winter is a State News columnist. Reach him at winterdr@msu.edu.