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.
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.
A pretty good characterization, IMO. Anyone who thinks people like this can be compromised with or can be pacified if we soothe their "grievances" is sadly mistaken.
Amen and amen again. But let's avoid draggging God into this monumental screw up. I suspect he's pissed enough as it is......
This is the heart of the message here.
No amount of grievance and frustration entitles any nation or group to a free ride at mass murder.
Never.
No exception ever.
The gap between the haves and the have-nots must be addressed by the have-nots. No one "gave" the US anything. The US has no obligation to succumb to blackmail on an international level. Nor does any other advanced civilized country.
Those who willingly volunteer a portion of their national wealth to address the problem are loath to see that all they have accomplished after generations of giving is breeding a larger number of people whose concept of helping themselves is holding their hands out.
No problem, as long as they don't resort to Mass Murder to underscore their point. They can stew and die.
But if they "forget" and try force mayhem and murder to demand tribute, bombing them into oblivion is a proper and necessary response.
I don't care if they wonder or not.
So long as they know that trying mass murder as an argument will bring them instant and permanent death.
That is also something else that I don't care if they wonder about or not.
I have been enjoying mine for years.
You are mad.
I have enjoyed it and I treasure it.
The certain knowledge that if nukes ever are a threat to me, my family and my community, it won't be from the Soviet Union.
That's not quite enough for you?
The clueless and the unconscious can enjoy anything.
I doubt that there are many labelledamesansmerci's in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lybya, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Oman, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates...
It's the knuckle dragging forest dwellers, stepping out from under trees and hurling spears at the moon that makes it possible for you and lamauchedame to engage your fantasies and cute malapropisms.<p. Without them, you could not exist.
We left Afghanistan to whoever wanted it, like Libertarians cry is the "best" foreign policy...
Thanks, Libertarian foreign policy experts for giving us Bin Laden, but no more please.
No. Perhaps I'm a greedy girl but:"...The certain knowledge that if nukes ever are a threat to me, my family and my community, it won't be from the Soviet Union...." is most definitely not enough for me. You should have the courage to expect more.
And I am not as naively certain as you that moving lines upon the map, and changing a few names, alters the realities that boil beneath the surface.
the mujahadeen are not the "...Hitlers and Tojos and Mussolinis..." The sooner you get that catastrophically quaint notion out of your head the safer we will all be. Knowing the enemy is not too anti-American a concept for you I trust?
As to your implied belief that no "...Hitlers and Tojos and Mussolinis..." sprung up after WWII--I suggest you crack open a few books about the continents of Asia and Africa.
So, Germany, Japan, and Italy been running a terrorism campaign against us for 50 years?
Or we didn't strike down their leaders?
Just what superfreak history book are you getting your bended knee lessons from?
CJ, you may be giving them more credit than they deserve. I am rerally sick of people making excuses for this dispicable act. I am sick of hearing about the rage of these terrorists. They have really stirred up a hornets nest, and it is time they feel a little American rage.
One might ask what purpose is served by this perversion of compassion, and the answer is not hard to find. It is really laying on the surface, for any who choose to look at it.
The "root-causers" wish to exonerate the perpetrator by relieving him of responsibility--they are seen in fact as the "real victims"--driven by events, having no choice--and therefore, not responsible.
Why relieve mass murderers of responsibility? Simple. The excuser identifies with the perpetrator, and needs to exonerate the perp so as to be able to continue to see himself as virtuous. Otherwise the excuser must admit to himself that he shares the perpetrators' intentions.
You will notice here, for example, there are none so sanctimonious, none so self-righteous and smug, as those who seek to blame the U.S. for what happened, or to explain away the evil which befell on Tuesday.
This is the hate-filled cousin of identifying with the perpetrator. It is called blaming the victim. It is what psychopaths do after they have carried out harm against others.
It is what Noam Chomsky, Andrew Greeley, Saddam, and other degenerate Mideast leaders have done. It is what hostile media scoundrels have done. It reveals for all here to see and read, the true emotions of the posters, which they would prefer to deny, even to themselves.
It's those who collude with the bombers by making excuses and explaining away their evil, justifying it, that need psychiatric help.
Amen, brother. Read Psalms 18:34. "He trains my hands for battle, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze." I believe we have reached that time. As FDR said, we shall gain the inevitable triumph, so help us, God.
They also need to be dead.
The question "why?" is the question by which a human being orders his universe out of choas. Chaos is the enemy of humanity. "Why?" is the question with which a human being--and maybe a nation--goes inwards and examines their conscience--emerging stronger.
To consign the question"why?" to the putrid confines of therapist hell by recommending psychiatric help is an indication of how far you are willing to go to shed your own humanity and strength in order to "get" the bad guys.
So you are already dead. They won. But they haven't beaten me....
Oops, here come some of those suicide Shinto fanatics who have been chasing us Americans for 50 years, I better go hide.
:-)
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