MY position is straightforward.

If Mr Isherwood finds it difficult to understand, that is, I think, because it is unfamiliar to him. It rests on Article 3 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which is cast as a universal to which there are no exceptions: "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person". If everyone has the right to life, it is obvious that, not only civil murder, but the political killing by non-state agents that we call terrorism, and the political killing by states which we call war, are all incompatible with such a right. The attempt to justify some kinds of killing and to express moral outrage at others seems to me (to use Mr Isherwood's word) "convoluted'.

September 11 and the subsequent war in Afghanistan are equally to be condemned, as both were incompatible with a universal "right to life". What I said about bin Laden's attitude to Hiroshima, and about Timothy McVeigh's to the Oklahoma bombing, were drawn from their own statements. Similarly, the connections between the Brixton bombing and the Columbine massacre were not made by me (though I agree with them), but by others. When the state regards it as justifiable even to burn people alive (for that is what modern bombing involves), then some citizens are going to feel much less inhibited about taking human life themselves.

Malcolm Pittock

St James's Avenue

Breightmet, Bolton