Bush policies prevent more 9/11s

Re “The Great Exception,” Opinion, June 3

While I don’t desire to be an apologist of the current administration, as a pragmatist I must assert that William T. Vollmann’s colorization of Americans hunkered down behind drawbridges is inaccurate. President Bush’s policies have evidently prevented any follow-up 9/11s thus far. Go out to a restaurant or visit a ballpark on any day of the week and you will routinely find thousands of fellow un-hunkered U.S. citizens. Americans have not acted as we please because others wished to be like us, as Vollmann writes. Rather, others wish to be like us because we act as we please. What admiration would others have for Americans if planes had kept flying into trade centers and governmental buildings? It is regretful that Vollmann abandoned his usual sound and exceptional rhetoric for that of the common opposition-to-Bush canards.

GARY L. BISHOP

Pacific Palisades