US needs more soul-searching after Sept 11-author

NEW YORK, Aug 9 (Reuters) US authors and film makers have failed to prompt soul-searching on how Americans contributed to the September 11 attacks, the author of a new bestseller on the events said.

''I feel like it's been a great failure of our artists and writers that we haven't done a better job at looking at ourselves and how we are and how our own behavior, to some extent, contributed to this tragedy,'' said Lawrence Wright, whose book ''The Looming Tower'' hit bookstores yesterday.

Almost five years after the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people and amid a media frenzy this week surrounding the release of director Oliver Stone's new movie ''World Trade Center,'' the book debuted on top of the Amazon.com bestseller list after good early reviews.

''America has lost so much standing in the world and we're going to have to do a lot to recapture it, but it begins with self-examination and I don't think that we have gone through that,'' Wright told Reuters in a phone interview.

Wright, a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine, spent five years researching and writing his book, which he described as a bid to understand and explain the rise of Islamic extremism.

''When bin Laden attacked America he was posing two questions to us. One is: 'What is America and what does it stand for?' and the other is: 'What is Islam and what does it stand for?''' he said.

''We phrase (the first question) to ourselves as 'Is it because of who we are or what we do?' I think that for the most part it's what we do,'' said Wright, pointing to U.S. policies in the West Asia. ''It's not really because of who we are.'' The United States has long faced criticism in the Arab and Islamic worlds for a perceived pro-Israeli bias, and many of its West Asia policies are unpopular in the region.

Wright said the United States had lost sight of what he called its core values, particularly the rule of law and a code of decency.

''I don't think any American thought we would be in this posture five years after 9/11,'' he said. ''There's a lot of rebuilding that we have to do to get back to the country we thought we were.'' Some aspects of Washington's post-2001 fight against terrorism, including the war in Iraq and the treatment of suspected militants, have come under attack from critics who say the United States is not living up to its own human rights standards.

US President George W Bush acknowledged in June that the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had hurt the United States' image abroad.

Reuters DH VP0540