U.S. should consider detente

To the editor:

After Sept. 11, 2006, what change the world mostly is America's leadership response to it. With all of the history and scholarship at its disposal, leadership ignored the impact of the Islamic movement spawned in the sixth and seventh centuries, waning and waxing again as the Ottomon Empire until its defeat in World War I, when European and Western powers established national borders in Arab, Middle Eastern and Far Eastern dominions.

Resentment of this continues as the "nation" most of these people recognize is Islam. Islam has well become the rallying point for the world's dispossessed, developing guerrilla-type aggression that knows no specific, definable geographic base.

America has entered the fray with little foresight and is at the point of internal struggle over future direction. In the face of our hurt feelings and humiliation and in consideration of present circumstances (military, economic and political), it would perhaps be the better part of valor to reassess and reposition ourselves in a powerful detente -- arm's length relationship with present adversaries. It would indeed be necessary to continue upgrading our intelligence, productively peering around every corner and every tree.

GILBERT DEGENHARDT, Cape Girardeau