Sir - I am not quite sure why you felt it necessary to reprint from a web magazine John Pilger's rant about the culpability of "US fundamentalism" for what happened on September 11th (Opinion, September 20th).
The piece contained such a level of distortion as to be astonishing. It would take too long to list all the errors and misrepresentations, but two broad features of Pilger's position stand out.
First, in listing his charges of imperialism against the US going back decades, he makes no mention at all of the Soviet threat that shaped US foreign policy until very recently. Presumably, the Cold War didn't factor into America's actions in places such as Central and South America, Vietnam, Korea or, indeed, the Middle East (many Arab states were Soviet-backed and armed, including Iraq).
This is not to say America's behaviour has been blameless - only the blindest jingoist would argue that - but you can't take particular actions out of their wider historical context and then present them as a charge sheet that proves America's sustained lust for world domination.
In the Cold War, Third-World nations were used by both sides as pawns in a global chess game. This, I dare say, is decisive in assessing the motivations behind America's actions up to the 1990s (and it has repercussions still).
Second, Pilger presents the Islamic fundamentalists as majority representatives of the oppressed, fighting for justice and equality. Bin Laden himself denies the validity of this analysis, and his world view has not met with ringing endorsment across Middle East. He is, by Arab standards also, an extremist.
Further, it is worth testing Pilger's view by asking what sort of state the fundamentalists are fighting for. For his part, bin Laden wishes to restore the 12th-century Caliphate across the entire Middle East. As a model for what such a state would be like, one need look no further than bin Laden's Taliban hosts in Afghanistan. And as we all know, the Taliban are paragons of justice and equality. - Yours, etc.,
Garrett G. Fagan, State College, Pennsylvania, USA.