Dear Sir/Madam,

Nowadays it is all but forgotten, but if France had behaved differently towards Germany after World War I, and instead of humiliating it with the Versailles Treaty etc., had shown some self-criticism and less self-righteousness regarding that war, it is very unlikely that Hitler would have gained the popular support that he did. Germany had real grievances that Hitler ruthlessly exploited. The incomprehensible suffering that that brought on Europe as a whole, and on Europe’s Jews in particular, is now history.

President Bush and his administration, it seems to me, are currently making a very similar error. He needs to step down from his moral high horse and take a look at what America might have done to provoke the murderous acts of terror visited upon it.

I know is asking a lot in the aftermath of what has happened, but it has to be done, sooner or later, if America is to be our hope for the future - which it has the potential to be - rather than our despair.