Our Al Qaeda Problem.

• Author: Scotera, Adam
• Position: Letters to the Editor - Letter to the Editor

Thanks for the invitation to discuss the left's response to Al Qaeda ("Our Al Qaeda Problem," by Sasha Abramsky, October issue). First, I would applaud the initiative to direct attention toward the crafting of a progressive plan for rolling back and resisting the harm done by religious and other fundamentalists, whether through bombs or repressive social structures.

However, I fear that Abramsky, having been too close to the explosions, may have been spooked into losing faith in the appeal of a free and open society. He often seems to assume that if we do not respond to Al Qaeda with military force, Osama bin Laden will likely become the dictator of the world. In his group criticism of several prominent liberal writers, he points out that they have "missed the central point: that ... Al Qaeda is classically imperialist ... looking to craft the next chapter of human history in its own image." That is the central point only if we accept that failure to militarize our society will enable Al Qaeda to subjugate us with their occasional anonymous blast.

Abramsky exhorts his fellow progressives to "uphold the values of pluralism, rationalism, skepticism, women's rights, and individual liberty" in opposition to the values of the fundamentalist Islamist terrorists. Mr. Abramsky, we are. We happen not to believe that these things can be accomplished using bombs. We also don't believe in preemptively becoming a totalitarian state in order to resist totalitarianism. We believe that a free and open society can survive international terrorism because it has broad appeal throughout the world, and does itself great harm whenever it uses excessive force.

Adam Scotera

Northampton, Massachusetts

Sasha Abramsky's essay ignored the root causes of Islamist hatred of the United States and some of its allies, not including Sweden, of course. Karl Popper's Open Society has lost the high ground to rampant consumerism, materialism, hedonism, fraud, chicanery, and avarice, just to name a few things. For decades, U.S. corporations have been forcibly injecting themselves into Islamist countries and cultures, and they don't like it, especially the Wahhabis, mysteriously omitted from the essay.

Abramsky implies that the Western values progressives hold so dear are somehow superior to Islam. This is arrogant and combative. However, I personally believe...