To Josh Pontrelli, in response to his column ("London bombings should serve as a mirror to Iraq," July 8): In the world of the alcoholic your viewpoint would render you an "enabler."

That is to say that you play right into the hands of people who seek to exploit your sympathy and to stoke your empathy against an action to justify an action. In this case that action is terrorism.

We can't define what it is to be one thing without defining how it stands out against another and we can't define terrorism without defining how it is different than something else, like war. They are two different things. Now ... hold the emotional responses. Are they different or not? Of course they are.

Define what happened in London? Now define what it is that happens in Iraq.

Using your logic and willingness to redefine issues it is certain to say that if someone did kill your neighbor your reaction would be quite contrary to what you imply that it would be and what you also imply was done by Iraqis in London last Thursday.

You would do nothing, absolutely nothing, because you would find a way to justify what happened to the neighbor or say it was a one-time incident that won't happen again and then you would go on your merry way back to life.

Don't tell me you would take up arms and join the military or go to bomb-making school and blow up a bus in the country of the so-called aggressors. You wouldn't.

So please ask yourself why you make the argument.

You will be better served using your intellect to first ask these questions before assuming you have thought things through fully enough to comment.