History Is Written By Those Who Win

The History Of Other Cultures Is Non-existent Until It Erupts In Confrontation With The United States.

The Sense Of Islam As A Threatening Other - With Muslims Depicted As Fanatical, Violent, Lustful, Irrational - Develops During The Colonial Period In What I Called Orientalism. The Study Of The Other Has A Lot To Do With The Control And Dominance Of Europe And The West Generally In The Islamic World. And It Has Persisted Because It's Based Very, Very Deeply In Religious Roots, Where Islam Is Seen As A Kind Of Competitor Of Christianity.

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.

The People Who Perpetrated The Terror Of The World Trade Center And Pentagon Bombings Are Something Different Because These People Were Obviously Not Desperate And Poor Refugee Dwellers. They Were Middle Class, Educated Enough To Speak English, To Be Able To Go To Flight School, To Come To America, To Live In Florida.

Ironically, Many Of These 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.