Surely it is possible for a Muslim fundamentalist quite reasonably to see President Bush's aim of making the whole world safe for democratic capitalism as a no less mortal threat to his traditional way of life, or his traditional sacred values, as we saw the threats from Stalin and Hitler, or even from the Kaiser and Napoleon, as a mortal threat to our ways of life or sacred values. Once that effort of imagination is made, Muslim terrorism becomes understandable, not so much as a rational act to turn back the irresistible forces of modern capitalism, but rather as a form of madness which has many historical precedents - particularly in the cause of national self-determination - many of which posterity applauds.
In any case, it may be relevant to remember that only quite recently western foreign policy envisaged thermonuclear destruction of the entire human race rather than risk the spread of communism. Having quite happily countenanced that MAD idea myself - better dead than red - I feel bound in conscience at least to give today's extremists the benefit of the doubt.
Peregrine Worsthorne
Hedgerley, Bucks
Dead people under rubble are as dead, and frightened people above it, as frightened, the world over. And the distinction between explosions caused by "a tiny minority of fanatical extremists" leaving bombs on the underground, and distinguished international statesmen ordering them to be dropped on a city from 30,000 feet, is a fine one.
It was clearly lost on Gavin Essler, who on Newsnight last week tried to shout down George Galloway for stating the obvious: that bombing Baghdad, an arms length abstraction, killing only no-account Arabs, is the fountain source of the London murders. The Bali bombs, aimed at Australians, the killings in Madrid, directed at another Iraq war coalitionist, and Thursday's killings hang together like beads on a thread.
According to a former CIA man on the same programme,"hatred for the west" across the Middle East has been registered by western polling firms at between 80% and 90%. Consequently, little unknown groups spring up pretty well independent of any central command. That hatred has been a long time maturing, through western imposition of the Shah, belief in US complicity in the Iran-Iraq war, and America's long sustaining of Israel in the disinheritance of Palestinians.
The Iraq war was the explosive confirmation of every fear and hatred already there. And, let's be clear, the Iraq war was an act of terrorism, 100,000 dead bodies strong. As the CIA man said, there is only one way out: a complete reversal of US foreign policy, the abandonment of intrusion, manipulation and aggression.
Edward Pearce
Thormanby, York
The "I told you so brigade" didn't take long (Blair's blowback, July 11). But if one assumes Blair did recognise there may be some increase in British susceptibility to attack as a consequence of invading Iraq, it is wrong to accuse him of being negligent in pursuing the policy. Worrying about what terrorists may do and trimming our behaviour accordingly is never the appropriate response. This is as true of choosing to continue to use the tube, as it is of developing foreign policy.
Richard Mollet
London
The main cause of terrorism is not "the violence inflicted on the Muslim world" (Comment, July 9), it is hatred of our secular western civilisation and the perpetrators are Islamic fundamentalists inspired and nurtured by countries like Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Britain must not cave in as the Spanish did.
Valda Redfern
Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts