Again, in her February 21st article, Ms. Khalid assumes too much about Americans and points her finger of guilt squarely upon journalists for having misled us when, in fact, Ms. Khalid seems to have been misled herself.

First, quoting a source which could only be the voice of the Bush administration as it exists in her own mind, Ms. Khalid implies that the administration raises the general terror threat level whenever it deems it necessary to justify foreign policy and “dirty work,” by stating, “Well, as the threat level shows, they were going to do something if we didn’t.” Ms. Khalid has no trouble pointing out the circularity of this logic and it would be a wonderful critique of the current administration if only it had anything to do with reality. If the administration wanted to justify its “dirty work” I don’t see why the terror threat levels would need to be involved, nor how this could outwit the entire nation or at least the nation’s journalists as Ms. Khalid implies.

Secondly, Ms. Khalid misunderstands the meaning of a plan to invade Iran (plan here being used as a noun), and planning to invade Iran (here, the verb to plan). The United States has plans on file to invade nearly every country on the earth at short notice if a situation should require it. These are called contingency plans and their use is contingent upon the situation necessitating them. The cold war produced a slew of contingency plans, but this does not mean that the United States plans to use them as Ms. Khalid implies when she states that “the government has already drawn up plans to attack and war is not too far away.”

Ms. Khalid goes on in the same paragraph to generalize about the feelings of this nation towards Muslims. She implies that Americans are bigotist chauvinists when she states, quoting what she must feel is the average American, “Well, yeah, those Muslims are crazy” and implying that we, as Americans, are easily misled. Short of giving Ms. Khalid a U.S. history lesson which she must have lacked in her Saudi education, I can say simply that this insult is not taken lightly by myself, nor I am sure, many others who read her article. If Ms. Khalid is going to attack ignorance and intolerance she feels that some Americans may have for Muslims and foreign policy, first she should address her own apparent ignorance and intolerance of non-Muslim Americans. Her patronizing tone when she states, “Remember the wars, the lies, the ‘collateral damage’ — Iraq is far away, I know, but remember it,” only underscores her assumption of American ignorance.

Finally, I urge Ms. Khalid to take my advice and actually listen to what American’s are saying, without assuming they are close-minded, intolerant, ignorant, prejudiced people before she too, finds herself with these labels.

Christopher Brinker 314-708-4844 CAS 2006 [email protected]