You Cannot Continue To Victimize

The Central Fact For Me Is, I Think, That The [role Of The] Intellectual... Cannot Be Played Without A Sense Of Being Someone Whose Place It Is Publicly To Raise Embarrassing Questions, To Confront Orthodoxy And Dogma (rather Than To Produce Them), To Be Someone Who Cannot Easily Be Co-opted By Governments Or Corporations, And Whose Raison D'etre Is To Represent All Those People And Issues That Are Routinely Forgotten Or Swept Under The Rug.

I Am For Peace. And I Am For A Negotiated Peace. But This Accord Is Not A Just Peace.

What Is Quite Worrisome Is The Absence Of Analysis And Reflection. Take The Word "terrorism." It Has Become Synonymous Now With Anti-americanism, Which, In Turn, Has Become Synonymous With Being Critical Of The United States, Which, In Turn, Has Become Synonymous With Being Unpatriotic. That's An Unacceptable Series Of Equations.

Just As None Of Us Is Outside Or Beyond Geography, None Of Us Is Completely Free From The Struggle Over Geography. That Struggle Is Complex And Interesting Because It Is Not Only About Soldiers And Cannons But Also About Ideas, About Forms, About Images And Imaginings.

Ironically, Many Of These People, Including Osama Bin Laden And The Mujahedeen, Were, In Fact, Nourished By The United States In The Early Eighties In Its Efforts To Drive The Soviets Out Of Afghanistan.