Dear Sir/Madam,

I would like to express my agreement with much (although not all) of what Seumas Milne writes in today's Guardian (They can't see why they are hated, 13 September 2001), and encourage you to persist in helping to get this vital view of reality, i.e. the West’s, particularly America’s, own culpability, across. We are largely responsible for having awakened the demons that now threaten us.

Unless our governments face up to the causes of the hate that culminated in the attacks on America (including the humiliations and injustices inflicted by Israeli on the Palestinians), they are bound to continue, and will become even worse as the terrorists gain access to chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, as eventually they surely will.

And in trying to protect ourselves, we will be in grave danger of transforming our free societies into police states.