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Gregg and all, I don't know what rhetoric everyone else is being subjected to, but I'm damned if I can see that its sole task has been to condemn the attack or to advocate unconsidered retaliatory strikes. The rhetoric that I am hearing from professional lists (like this one) to talk shows to Middle East analysts is peppered with reservations, self criticism and calls for restraint. If we helped Bin Laden and the Afghans when they were being invaded by the Russians, the more shame on his head for his ingratitude. Chomsky needs to undergo a sex change operation and live in Afghanistan as a woman for the rest of his life. That ought to concretize the experience of being an uncounted number. Or maybe not, if he is lucky enough to get the sympathy of the American press, as others have done. The posting of communist, or any other ideological web sites, and the call for workers to unite on a film-philosophy list is certainly bizarre and inappropriate. Not to mention the rank stupidity of pseudo-communists applauding right-wing religious fanatic terrorism. Let's see--didn't those terrific communist Soviets occupy Afghanistan and unite in trying to exterminate their workers? The only thing that begins to rival right-wing simplistic ideology is left-wing simplistic ideology. The silly intellectual posturing in those postings makes them more laughable than offensive. Gregg, I respect your point. But it is a point that every intellectual on every academic list feels compelled to make, apparently. My relation to these events is not severed. This is a very emotional time, and I just don't feel like being lectured on the presumed lack of sophisticated reasoning that defines the world's stereotype of Americans. Can we please just feel the pain and anger before we have to don the American hair shirt? My young daughter lives a few miles from the Pentagon. In her first distraught phone call to me she wondered if she should call our travel agent who is Arab-American (and arranges all our family's flights) and express her concern that he will not suffer from any misguided, vindictive behavior. It doesn't take a brain trust to get to these conclusions. If she can do it after viewing the devastation firsthand, so can many other Americans, including our leaders. On the whole, the international community has been very respectful of our overwhelming grief, which is still the dominant emotion. For this we are grateful. Kathy Agar P.S. Bin Laden is not a "beast." He is a very dangerous, very complex human opponent built by many hands, including his own. Self-reflection is an important long term aspect of taking effective action against terrorism, but sometimes you do have to overpower the guy in the cockpit with the knife, even before you understand where he is coming from and feel his pain. > This is all to say that we can--we must--condemn the attack, but > the rhetoric of so many talking heads has made this their sole task, > thereby severing any relation that we might have had to these events. I > don't want to suggest that we Americans constitute an evil empire, but > it's not as if the government's hands are clean. Perhaps, in this respect, > talk of pacificism versus activism is misplaced: first, because no matter > what we say here, there will be military action of some kind, as the > president has promised and the congress assured; but seocond, and more > importantly, because this dichotomy doesn't for a second acknoledge that, > if Bin Laden is responsible, he is a beast we have built, to some degree, > with our own hands. > > Gregg Flaxman