With reference to Muslim Student's letter 'Restore the balance' (Sept 21) on America's intention to bomb Afghanistan to the ground, can I just point out that to date, not one military weapon has been fired in anger?

To say that the Americans are on the warpath is wrong. They are seeking justice, and if it takes the military to seek justice, as in this case, then it has to be done. The Taliban have shown grave indifference to international reasoning.

There are many Malaysians who claim and call for patience, evidence and for the US to submit to negotiations in their pursuit of justice. Joining them are the Indonesians. Strangely, the Indonesians showed no such restraint when they went about killing one another and Christians under the guise of religion.

In the case of Malaysians, I never saw any restraint when Umno Youth threatened to burn down the Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall last year. Restraint? Hypocrisy.

As for Israel, I can only say that the antipathy towards the country coming from so many quarters is indeed amazing.

Yes, blame them and criticise them for their violent responses to the intifada (uprising), but to categorise them as the greatest terrorists in history? The PLO gets my vote for sure, along with the IRA, Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

In the history of the formation of the Jewish state, atrocities against the Palestinians have not been perpetrated by the Jews alone, but by the Syrians, the Jordanians, the Iraqis and even by their own kind.

Who do we blame - the Jews and Israel? The Czechs, whose arms shipments allowed the nation of Israel to fight in the 1940s? The two-third of the United Nation countries who supported the right of the Jews to stay and move to Palestine? The Russians, who voted in favour of the formation of the state of Israel? The Egyptians, who made peace with the Jews, thus selling out Arab solidarity for the Suez canal? The British and French, for allowing the Jews in? When do Hamas start bombing them?

Some invoke the name of God in their quest for justice. Who was right or wrong when both Iraq and Kuwait invoked jihad in the name of God when they went to war?

I think the world would be a better place if we all learnt to sit down and look at issues from a macro perspective, not through bias-tinted glasses wreaked with religious zeal that can often be misplaced.