Re: “Another Bombing, This Time in Pakistan” (editorial, March 28): Your editorial reminded me of my first childhood encounter with terrorism: September 11th. The memory of this terrorist attack shaped my understanding of terrorism as something that happened to major Western metropolises, like New York City. When attacks occurred in Paris and Brussels earlier this year, I–like doubtless many other Americans–felt I was reliving the experience of seeing a distant yet familiar city come to harm. However, when Beirut and Lahore were attacked this year, we, as Americans, were guilty of minimizing the pain felt by the Lebanese and Pakistanis.

One has to wonder: if Americans can relate to the French and the Belgians, what makes Pakistanis so different? The Times’s editorial quotes a spokesman for the Taliban who states that the attacks were meant, surprisingly, to target Christians enjoying an Easter outing. Since the majority of Americans identify as Christian, it would make sense for Americans to identify with Christian Pakistanis rather than Muslim Pakistanis, toward whom many Americans might feel hostile. Yet it seems that American indifference writes off all Middle Easterners as “Muslim terrorists,” raising the question: why do Americans so deeply fail to accept that Western and non-Western cultures share certain basic values? Though our geographic isolation and radical individualism may be to blame, this American urge to villainize the Middle East suggests that many Americans fail to imagine a Middle East outside the framework of terrorism and inside the greater context of humanity. Our reactions to recent attacks in distant places speak poorly for the state of cultural education in this country.