Half a dozen authors from the University of Iowa’s International Writers program will gather tonight at the Iowa City library to talk about their view of September eleventh. Christopher Merrill says the writers found it natural to devote their regular Wednesday session to events of a year ago.September 11 clearly has changed the dynamics of foreign affairs, he says, not just for the U-S but for every country on the planet. Now the U-S has experienced some of the sort of tragedy these people have faced in their own lands, they have sympathy but also figure we have a deeper understanding of the war-turn countries they’ve come here from. At the same time, they’re deeply suspicious, not of the Bush administration’s war on terror, but of ways the U-S has used it to act in a “unilateral fashion.” Though Merrill says even writers from Muslim countries are sympathetic to American military efforts, they suspect the motives behind the country choosing to act on its own.
