Dumb and dumber
Saturday October 27, 2001 The Guardian
It's arguably a waste of my time to respond to smart-mouthed Europeans who revel in declaring just how much more civilised they are than we gauche Americans (Leader, October 24), but - I can't help myself.
You decry our president's "narrow understanding of a complex, contradictory, interconnected planet where there are no simple definitions and no easy answers". Not to worry: "the UN is currently debating what constitutes terrorism". We may be dumber than posts here in America, but we will always consider hijacking airliners, crashing them into buildings, and killing thousands of civilians terrorism. This is, as we say over here, not a close call.
Our apologies for our president presuming us part of the civilised world. It must be so tiresome when barbarians such as us try to group themselves with a civilisation that produced Shakespeare, Stonehenge, Benny Hill, the Spice Girls, football hooligans, Andrew Lloyd Webber... Steven Lent Arlington, Virginia, USA
· Now that it turns out that disaffected Turks who could not become German citizens were instrumental in planning the September 11 attacks (Germany's failure to detect plot, October 24), I'm surprised I haven't seen a flurry of angry letters and editorials protesting against Europe's policies on citizenship and immigration as a root cause of Islamic disaffection.
But then, it is far easier to rail against the American bully (whose policies are far less racist) than look into our own "underlying causes". JM Mancini Cobh, Co Cork, Ireland