The points brought out on the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by your Chiaroscuro columnist in 'America gets its "Mother of All Battles"' (Sept 13) is misguided at best and total hogwash at its worst. He attempts to rationalise that this act of blatant terrorism was justified because of UN-sponsored actions during the Gulf War, a Security Council resolution to defend Saudi Arabia and recover Kuwait?

Let me remind Mr Pillai that Malaysia voted to support those military actions and the subsequent sanctions that have been in place. The US did not act alone in the Gulf War and Iraq is far from being the best buddy to her Arab neighbours. If anything, the US has taken unacceptable risks in securing the borders of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for her own sake (oil supply) and the peace of the Arab Peninsula.

The latest act of terrorism inflicted on the WTC cannot be equated to the military strikes on Iraq for a few simple reasons.

The precise strike operations are aimed at military targets where the main purpose is to disable the enemy's ability to operate those weapons or facilities (telecommunication, bridges and power plants included), not the extinction of human life. Thus the term collateral damage implies that civilian casualties were not the intended targets.

Military strikes do not measure their success rate by the number of people killed but on whether that particular military threat remains after the strike. This is standard doctrine used by all professional armed forces in the world including our own in Malaysia.

In contrast, when terrorists like Osama bin Laden plan their attacks, their purpose is to inflict as many casualties as possible on their victims with the purpose of instilling fear in the populace. They do not care for military logistics but view hotels, malls, marketplaces and houses of worship as valid targets for their 'wars'.

Such was the case of the strike on WTC. There is no military value in the place but whoever planned this attack timed it to inflict the greatest number of human casualties, none of them military personnel. The fact remains that WTC is the target, not 'collateral damage' from a nearby military target.

I should also point out that WTC is a place of international commerce, not just American. Among the victims in the strike are the Thai Tourism Board, Overseas Union Bank of Singapore and not to mention the myriad of nationalities and races who work in them. In viewing the videos on survivors and rescuers working in the rubble you can count Asians, Africans, Europeans and locals. This attack is on the international trade community, not just a symbol of prestige for the US.

Can Mr Pillai explain to the Malaysian public on how a terrorist attack on offices of trade including those of our neighbours Singapore and Thailand be just deserts for UN-sponsored actions in the Middle East?

It is also erroneous of the article to mention in the 7th paragraph that the New York Stock Exchange is housed in WTC. This statement is factually and symbolically wrong.

The NYSE is housed in its own annex at Wall Street and will probably be opened for business latest Monday. The Nasdaq and American Stock Exchange are also housed nearby but not in NYSE.

The point is this, the physical destruction of these exchanges will constitute major blows to the financial world including the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange but the counters represented there, the American companies, will definitely continue to function and work through the crisis as they do now. In order to cripple American industry, the enemy will have to wipe out every plant, office and factory in this country.

Mr Pillai also denigrated the influence of American involvement in the two world wars and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, trying to equate America's foreign wars with 'isolationist' thinking. Ironically it was America's involvement in these wars that ended the period of American isolation that started with the Monroe Doctrine and ended with Pearl Harbor.

In 1917 when the doughboys shipped for France, the Kaiser's troops were already planning for the march to Paris faced by depleted French and British divisions. The American sacrifice of 150,000 war dead turned the tide of WW1.

In WW2 the liberation of Malaya and the Far East from Japanese occupation would have been impossible without the American war effort, first in protecting Australia at Guadalcanal and then the subsequent island-hopping campaigns across the Pacific culminating in the assault on the Japanese home islands.

American action against the communist bloc in Korea and Vietnam bought precious time for the fledgling democracies in Southeast Asia to build their economies, Malaysia's included, to resist local communist insurgencies and become part of the world trade network.

Please remember that Malaysia was part of Seato, an alliance set up with American sponsorship during the Vietnam War years to afford mutual protection against external threats (including Sukarno's Indonesia during Konfrontasi). The time was precious for us in Malaysia so that we were able to sort out our own communal problems and to produce a successful economy based on the Western model.

So please, spare your venom against the US less we become like the Malay proverb "seperti meludah ke langit".