Sorry, VC, I don't buy it.

Firstly, I don't know how you understand "hegemony", but dictionaries define it as leadership or domination. The U.S. is certainly "guilty" of leadership, but we haven't attained it by force. Actually, I believe most would agree with me that a hegemony generally connotes a forcible domination, like the British Empire, Third Reich, etc. While we have gotten ourselves into questionable campaigns like Vietnam, now almost universally viewed as a huge error, they were temporary and not intended to create a hegemony. In fact, our motives for what we did in Vietnam were to help the other countries in the area avoid being conquered by communist neighbors. You have a short memory or are too young to remember how that affair came about. The same is true of other "crimes" of which we are accused. Why do we support Israel? To create a hegemony over the Palestinians or the other Arabs? It may be partly to protect the sources of oil on which we are so dependent, but we're not the only ones who depend on it. We are perfectly capable of creating a hegemony by force in the Mid East (as demonstrated in the temporary hegemony we put up in the Iraq-Kuwait affair, which was for the purpose of rescuing a small state invaded by an aggressive neighbor), but as soon as the immediate purpose of it had been attained, we quit without even going to Damascus.

As to grudges, we don't really have them. I would think the Marshall Plan was proof of that. We sulked a good while, but we're back to relations with Vietnam and even starting to help them. Cuba is a somewhat different situation which has to do with domestic politics and all those Cuban voters in Florida, but it looks like we're going to resume relations in the not too distant future and most Americans are for that and have been for years.

But all this is really beside the point. You and others seem to be suggesting that resentment of American policies, successes, prosperity, investments in other countries, the spread of our ideas of democracy and equality in places where such notions are tabu, somehow justify what was done and that we deserve it. Why else even bring it up? Aside from the fact that these maniacs killed many other people besides Americans, as they must have known they would given the nature of the WTC. But you are implying that there was some kind of justice in it.

Along with nearly every American, I deeply resent the fact that certain Colombians and Asians are making incredible fortunes manufacturing and supplying dope to the U.S., which has a fearful effect here. No matter that if there weren't a market for it, the problem would vanish. The fact is that there is a market and there are those who are richer than some small countries from the dope trade. These people are the lowest kind of humanity. But according to your logic, not only are they personally guilty, but so are their countries since they are citizens of them, and therefore I have a perfect right to put together a plan to blow up crowded buildings or commit some other outrage like NY to "punish" the Colombians, Burmese, Thais, etc. who are making themselves a scourge to my country in particular and the world in general. Does that admittedly trifling and imperfect analogy suggest how false your position is?

This is my position: If a sneak attack by the armed forces of a state, a la Pearl Harbor, is unjustified whatever the provocation, if any, there is absolutely zero justification for any individual or group of individuals to commit an act which is designed to kill as many people as possible, inflict as much financial loss as possible, destroy symbolic places, and in general disrupt the national wellbeing and confidence. To repeat: SUCH ACTS CAN NOT BE JUSTIFIED. PERIOD. And if you start bringing up what the U.S. may have done (even if true), your only purpose has to be to attempt a justification, or just to take an opportunity for another anti-US diatribe. If the latter, it's despicable to do it now; it's like kicking someone who's already down. And that's why I found BY's post so offensive.