...it Is Sensible To Begin By Asking

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 Orient That Appears In Orientalism, Then, Is A System Of Representations Framed By A Whole Set Of Forces That Brought The Orient Into Western Learning, Western Consciousness, And Later, Western Empire.... The Orient Is The Stage On Which The Whole East Is Confined. On This Stage Will Appear The Figures Whose Role It Is To Represent The Larger Whole From Which They Emenate. The Orient Then Seems To Be, Not An Unlimited Extension Beyond The Familiar European World, But Rather A Closed Field, A Theatrical Stage Affixed To Europe.

[mujahedeen], By The Way, Don't Represent Islam In Any Formal Sense. They're Not Imams Or Sheiks. They Are Self-appointed Warriors For Islam.

It's Very Hard, For Example, To Justify The Thirty-four-year Occupation Of The West Bank And Gaza. It's Very Hard To Justify 140 Israeli Settlements And Roughly 400,000 Settlers.

Speaking As A New Yorker, I Found It (9/11 Event] A Shocking And Terrifying Event, Particularly The Scale Of It. At Bottom, It Was An Implacable Desire To Do Harm To Innocent People.