Andrew Sia's discourse on "America under attack - lessons from Hollywood", Parts 1 to 3 (Oct 4) is like a soup dish - wide (replete with copious references to American policy failures) and shallow in depth.

The world is shocked as it wonders how a group of fanatics could suicidally crash commercial planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon in the US, taking thousands of innocent lives on Sept 11.

The terrorist acts were a threat to civilisation. On that day, it was American targets. Tomorrow it might be anywhere else, including Malaysia. The world will wonder what drives this kind of fanaticism and how to avert it.

After a perfunctory condemnation of terrorism of which the writer said there could be no justification, he seized the occasion to launch a tirade against the hypocrisy of American foreign policies and hegemonic designs which, basically, are separate issues and ought to be separately addressed and not be linked to the first lest it may give the impression that the terrorist attacks and the fundamentalist culture that inspires them are somewhat understandable and mitigated.

No well-informed person doubts the fact that there is much hypocrisy in the sole remaining superpower's policies, which is from other countries' point of view, a big problem by itself.

That, however, does not detract from the necessity of a global effort led by the US to stem the other emerging problem of terrorism fuelled by religious extremism.

To link the two separate issues as if one invites the other is, whilst self serving of one personal leftist or socialist agenda of expressing antipathy towards US' superpower depredations, entirely insensitive to the senseless loss of lives in America that the entire humanity shares in grief and abhorrence of those who perpetrated it.

More importantly, the unpopular and bullying aspects of US policies which engender hate does not explain or justify at all the kind of hate and the methods of venting it that were displayed by the suicide bombers.

The mindset and the kind of ideology and culture that give rise to it is the real issue that needs global attention. At the risk of repeating myself, on Sept 11, it was hatred of US policies. But tomorrow, it may well be some other provocations by some other countries that will be attacked even though they share nothing of US hegemonic policies.

Whilst acknowledging American use of aid and military support to further its policy of Pax Americanna should be opposed globally, let us, in opposing it, not assume too sanctimonious a posture.

I ask, which country that has the resources and stature of a superpower - let alone the sole remaining one - has not and will not perpetrate such policies to maintain its global dominance under the guise of national security?

Before we criticise American foreign policies' inconsistencies and depredation from that high moral pedestal, we should ask ourselves, if Malaysia had been a superpower like the US, would we have done much less in asserting our national interest, economic or strategic, in the like manner?

This is not an attempt to plead excuses for US policies but for an understanding of real politics and the need to address it as a separate issue distinct from those of terrorism and religious fanaticism.

I reiterate that our disgust for US policies should and does not lessen our disgust for the attacks on US civilians regardless that these attacks were driven by the terrorists' extreme antipathy towards US policies.

The manner in which we rationally express our disgust as differentiated from that of the irrational terrorists goes to prove the measuring cast between the terrorists and us.

Whilst I am at this, I don't think it is helpful for the writer to liberally use words like economic terrorism or state terrorism to describe the US hegemonic manipulation in both these areas - no more than I would be justified to describe the writer's article as a piece of intellectual or journalistic terrorism just because I think its contents assail rational sense.

Nor do I take kindly the writer's criticism of the negative attitudes of Malaysian non-Muslims to his anti-American views as being influenced or attributable to their nervousness about Islamic fundamentalism.

The writer even added, "The local media is only too happy to play up the 'extremist threat' and its vague associations to the 'Islamic bogeyman' PAS. And given the racial realities of Malaysia, their feelings towards Malay-Muslims are also ambivalent."

This kind of conclusion is no less speculative, contentious and banal than the converse assertion that Malaysian Muslims are more favourably disposed to his views. This is again assuming that his findings of Malaysian views being divided on religious lines is correct, because of their greater tolerance to Islamic fundamentalism.

Has it ever occurred to the writer to try the yardstick of rationality (rather than religious bias) for a change to explain the responses to his views?