Rishi Kundi’s column (“Scholars must remember they’re Americans,” SN 10/4) is a full-fledged endorsement of military retaliation for the Sept. 11 attack, but it shows little understanding of Sontag and Chomsky (Chomsky, incidentally, is not a socialist), or of the real situation.

A full-scale military assault on Afghanistan may prove fruitless if the terrorists simply move to other countries. What will the real cost be in civilian lives and physical damage in a country like Afghanistan? American intervention, moreover, has not always brought prosperity and democracy to other parts of the world.

There should be a move to hunt out and arrest the terrorists, but Kundi totally ignores an American tradition of resistance to foreign wars, a tradition going back at least to Thoreau and the Mexican War. In fact, the rush to war shows how our country’s real needs have been neglected.

Bush and Congress have shown little interest in the real need for better education, health care and a cleaner environment. If the tens of billions suddenly available for military action had been directed toward research and development of renewable energy, the situation in the Middle East might be very different.

Peter Heilemann
mathematics graduate student