The definition of terrorism has to be more precise, so that we are able to discriminate between, for example, what it is that the Palestinians are doing to fight the Israeli military occupation and terrorism of the sort that resulted in the World Trade Center bombing.

It [destroying Twin Towers] was a leap into another realm - the realm of crazy abstractions and mythological generalities, involving people who have hijacked Islam for their own purposes. It's important not to fall into that trap and to try to respond with a metaphysical retaliation of some sort.

[9/11] was bloody-minded destruction for no other reason than to do it.

[One task of intellectuals is] to break down the stereotypes and reductive categories that are . . . limiting to human thought and communication.

My argument is that history is made by men and women, just as it can also be unmade and rewritten, always with various silence and elisions, always with shapes imposed and disfigurements tolerated.

The just response to this terrible event should be to go immediately to the world community, the United Nations. The rule of international law should be marshaled, but it's probably too late because the United States has never done that; it's always gone it alone.

The history of other cultures is non-existent until it erupts in confrontation with the United States.