...it Is Sensible To Begin By Asking

It Is Very Easy To Make Wild Generalizations About Islam. All You Have To Do Is Read Almost Any Issue Of The New Republic And You'll See There The Radical Evil That's Associated With Islam, The Arabs As Having A Depraved Culture, And So Forth. These Are Impossible Generalizations To Make In The United States About Any Other Religious Or Ethnic Group.

It's Very Hard, For Example, To Justify The Thirty-four-year Occupation Of The West Bank And Gaza. It's Very Hard To Justify 140 Israeli Settlements And Roughly 400,000 Settlers.

Every Empire, However, Tells Itself And The World That It Is Unlike All Other Empires, That Its Mission Is Not To Plunder And Control But To Educate And Liberate.

To Say That We're Going To End Countries Or Eradicate Terrorism, And That It's A Long War Over Many Years, With Many Different Instruments, Suggests A Much More Complex And Drawn-out Conflict For Which, I Think, Most Americans Aren't Prepared.

[9/11] Was Not Meant To Be Argued With. It Wasn't Part Of Any Negotiation. No Message Was Intended With It. It Spoke For Itself, Which Is Unusual.