Dear Prof. Pipes,

I liked Prof. Pipes op-ed contribution in today's NYT ("Give the Chechens a Land of Their Own") and agreed entirely with his criticism of Russian attitudes and policies towards Chechnya.

However, in the following quote, he provides a good example of how much easier it is to see others' faults than one's own:

"The attacks on New York and the Pentagon were unprovoked and had no specific objective. Rather, they were part of a general assault of Islamic extremists bent on destroying non-Islamic civilizations."

In the same way that the Russian government (and most Russians) refuse even to contemplate any culpability of their own regarding Chechen terrorism, so too the American government (and most Americans) refuse even to contemplate any culpability of their own regarding the Islamic terrorism directed against themselves.

While there is no justification whatsoever for what they did, anymore than there is for what the terrorists of Beslan did, contrary to what Prof. Pipes writes, the 9/11 terrorists did have some very definite reasons for attacking America: American influence and military presence in Muslim countries, and, above all else, American support for Israel, which in Muslim eyes is inflicting humiliation, injustice and worse on their Palestinian brothers.

I do not believe that America is nearly as culpable as Russia for the terror directed against it, but a little less self-righteousness would not go amiss and give us some prospect, which we don't have now, of actually winning the "war on terror".

The way things are at the moment, the "war on terror" will drag on indefinitely, distracting us all from facing up to the much bigger threat posed by our growth-dependent economy and grossly materialist lifestyles, which are already placing a non-sustainable (and thus inevitably catastrophic) drain and strain on our planet's limited natural resources and carrying capacity.

We have no more than about two or three decades to create a sustainable global economy and lifestyles for 7-9 billion people. This really is the "mother of all battles". If we lose it we are extinct.