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Read other letters about this article
In my view, this excellent and important analysis goes a little wobbly in the last two paragraphs.
In the penultimate paragraph, it's not clear to me whether the ideas expressed are wholly attributable to the Padgaoonkar editorial or not. In any event, while I understand the points being made, I believe, much more than fear or emotional satisfaction, something akin to racism (in function and in spirit), plays a much larger role. In other words, more than fear and even more than vengeance, it's a hateful disregard for the lives of others (and a corresponding belief in one's own superiority) that plays the biggest role in coloring the response(s) to terrorism under review.
With regards to the last paragraph, while I wholeheartedly agree that this is about much more than "what the Bush administration did", your analysis is still constrained by time, i.e., it relates only to the time-frame of the Bush administration. Whereas I believe the roots run much deeper into the past, both in terms of US government malfeasance and the complicity of the media and other institutions.
