Beginning Is Not Only A Kind Of

Ironically, Many Of People, Including Osama Bin Laden And The Mujahedeen, Were, In Fact, Nourished By The United States In The Early Eighties In Its Efforts To Drive The Soviets Out Of Afghanistan.

It Is Quite Common To Hear High Officials In Washington And Elsewhere Speak Of Changing The Map Of The Middle East, As If Ancient Societies And Myriad Peoples Can Be Shaken Up Like So Many Peanuts In A Jar.

The Arab Rulers Are Basically Unpopular. They Are Supported By The United States Against The Wishes Of Their People. In All Of This Rather Heady Mixture Of Violence And Policies That Are Remarkably Unpopular Right Down To The Last Iota, It's Not Hard For Demagogues, Especially People Who Claim To Speak In The Name Of Religion, In This Case Islam, To Raise A Crusade Against The United States And Say That We Must Somehow Bring America Down.

Speaking As A New Yorker, I Found It A Shocking And Terrifying Event [9/11], Particularly The Scale Of It. At Bottom, It Was An Implacable Desire To Do Harm To Innocent People. It Was Aimed At Symbols: The World Trade Center, The Heart Of American Capitalism, And The Pentagon, The Headquarters Of The American Military Establishment.

The Other View Is Of The Official United States, The United States Of Armies And Interventions. The United States That In 1953 Overthrew The Nationalist Government Of Mossadegh In Iran And Brought Back The Shah.