Posted on 09/16/2001 9:10:20 AM PDT by Clive
Before we can fight terrorism with any success, we have to change the way we think about it.
People in the West often assume that terrorists must be driven to it by some burning grievance. If the men of the Irish Republican Army bomb a pub in Belfast, it must spring from their anger over the British occupation. If a Palestinian suicide bomber blows himself up outside an Israeli disco, it must spring from his frustration over the harsh Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
Call it the "root causes" theory. What terrorists do may be despicable, goes the argument, but they did it because their grievances had been ignored by a brutal occupier, an oppressive government or an indifferent world. It follows that the only way to end terrorism is to address the "root causes."
Serious students of terrorism rejected the "root causes" theory long ago. Terrorism does not spring spontaneously from social deprivation or political oppression. If it did, then every poor and undemocratic country would be a hive of terrorists. Soviet dissidents never resorted to murdering innocent civilians, nor did the opponents of Nazism -- though they were fighting some of the worst forms of oppression ever seen.
Terrorism is a deliberate form of political or ideological warfare waged by fanatics with a disposition for unlimited violence. In the case of extreme religious terrorists, whether Islamic or Christian or Sikh, they are engaged in a holy war, a struggle for the fate of the world that justifies any amount of bloodshed.
Addressing "root causes" will not stop people like that. Even if Israel pulled out of the West Bank tomorrow, Islamic terrorist groups would keep trying to kill Israelis. To them, it is not the Israeli occupation that rankles. It is the very existence of Israel. It is pure hatred, more than grievance, that drives them.
Yet the "root causes" notion lives on. We have seen it twice this week on these very pages. The day after Tuesday's attack, University of Toronto scholar Thomas Homer-Dixon argued that the root cause of terrorism was the growing gap between rich countries and poor ones. "These differences breed envy and frustration and, ultimately, anger," he wrote. "The problem will never go away if we don't address the underlying disparities that help motivate such violence."
Then, in yesterday's paper, columnist Rick Salutin said that the key to defusing support for terrorism was "eliminating the worst cases of wretchedness that sustain it." His suggestion: End Western sanctions against Saddam Hussein's Iraq and get Israel to pull out of the West Bank.
No doubt both writers abhor what happened this week as much as everyone else. But by making excuses for terrorism, even qualified excuses, they give the perpetrators what they crave most: legitimacy. Worse, they acquit them of responsibility for their own actions.
If terrorism springs from their frustration over unanswered grievances, then it is not really their fault. It is merely a disease and they are simply the carriers, "rather in the way that innocent animals might be the carriers of rabies" (as the conservative U.S. author Midge Decter once put it).
That not only gives comfort to the terrorists, it hurts the effort to fight them. If terrorists are not morally responsible for their own actions, then it frees the rest of us from the burden of taking them on.
Well, that freedom just ended. We now know we must confront terrorism face to face. Before we do that, we must learn to see it as it is -- not as the product of "root causes" but as the result of a deliberate decision to kill in the name of hate.
Have you read Demi Bin Laden's hysteria? Go to one of his threads.
He hates this country.
After that I would go fix all the problems the Clinton Administration created.
1. Force the Israeli to pull out of the west bank
2. Pull the US out of the balkans and let them settle there own problems.
3. Beef up our security in the US.
4. Invade Iraq, secure the oil, and get rid of Hussein. Set up a new puppet government.
I agree with you here!
I am confused. Are these terrorists "soldiers" for the Arab and Muslim world or are they not? I see all sorts of messages from Arab states and Muslim clerics disassociating themselved from Bin Laden, but then I see messages like yours which seem to say the opposite.
It seems to me that one cannot have it both ways. Does Bin Laden represent the Arabs or doesn't he? If he does, then the Arab states and Islam are responsible for what he did. If he does not, then he is nothing more than a maniac and a criminal in the catagory of a Charles Manson or a Ted Kaczynski or a Symbionese Liberation Army and his "political agenda" should be taken about as seriously as we take the agendas of those people.
Actually, you can have it both ways if you think outside the box, (I can't believe I just used that cliche, but there it is.)
Not all societies have evolved into post-enlightenement/nation state political consciousness--lines on the map notwithstanding. There are a lot of ancient, turbulent rivers flowing under that map which the British and French left behind.
The US is about to embark upon a crusade to "rid the world of evil"--a world that does not really look exactly as it seems when you rip the map off its facade. Things are much more clear when we pierce the veil of our own dearly beloved delusions about that map....
We don't weaken ourselves, or our resolve, by trying to penetrate the caricatures (such as "terrorist") that always pop up in the wake of an act of war. If not useful today, knowlege and understanding might be useful in preventing another stike in the future.
It might even result in our ability to live peacefully, rather than as permanenet hunter-gatherers--hunting down terrorists and killing them all.
He has not been delegated to "represent" Islam by any political or religious authority as we understand "authority".
Rather, he is functioning remarkably like the tribes and gangs of young men who swept across Northern Africa and pushed into Europe eons ago "inspired" to convert or kill the infidel by sword and fire.
The war that we are going to wage is almost a Twilight Zone war: Consciousnesses eons apart--and yet maybe not so far as I think. I just heard President Bush say that we were going on a "crusade". He tripped over the word and seemed uncomfortable using it. Perhaps he was conscious that we are being draggged back "through a glass darkly" onto a turf that our modern, secular armed forces are not prepared to fight--900 AD.
Bin Laden, and the thousands of Bin Ladens that will spring up like dragon's teeth when we strike him down, has some advantages in this latest round of a 1300 round fight. But we have a few "dragon's teeth" in our head too, I dare say.
I just want to know how "The Last Remaining Superpower On Earth" found itself in this absurd, bloody disaster I resolutely resist succumbing to the "easy" explanation........
Kudos!
Kudos!
Kudos!
Kudos!
Kudos!
Take time to read this transcript of PBS documentary, and watch it if they rebroadcast.
Most telling comment (paraphrased): "It's not our principles they hate, it's us."
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