NEWS
& POLITICS: September 23
Whatever happened to root causes?
by Lowell Feld
This week, just over two years after 9/11, a high-level conference
on "Fighting Terrorism for Humanity: A Conference on the Roots
of Evil " is being held in New York City. The event, organized
by the International Peace Academy and the Norwegian Mission to
the United Nations, aims to "distinguish the real roots and
origins of terrorism" and to "identify the breeding grounds
and the origins of hate in order to eliminate them." Discussion
will center on a report by an international panel of experts on
terrorism, prepared under the auspices of the Norwegian Institute
of International Affairs. Distinguished speakers at the New York
conference include Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Professor Elie Weisel,
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and Prime Minister Kjell Magne
Bondevik of Norway.
One speaker who will be in New York this week, but certainly not
for this conference, is our own President, George W. Bush. For "Dubya"
and his far-right-wing Administration, root causes are words never
spoken out loud. Why are these words seemingly verboten by
the Bush Administration?
For starters, root causes don't match the Bush worldview because
they are complicated and "gray," and that's just not the
way Bush or the right wing thinks. On the contrary, Bush and his
Christian Right allies tend to see things in simplistic and simple-minded
black and white, even Apocalyptic, terms. To these people, root
causes are liberal, secular, over-intellectualized, America-hating
garbage. And politically they are a threat, because if root causes
exist, then 9/11 and the "war on terrorism" cease to fit
into the Bush Administration's simplistic good and evil paradigm.
Another major problem for the right wing in looking at root causes
is that such an examination might imply that the United States is
not the completely innocent victim of maniacal, psychopathic terrorists.
Instead, the situation might be a great deal more complicated, with
U.S. behavior, both intentional and unintentional, contributing
to the terrorism unleashed against it. This goes against the right
wing's notion of the United States as a shining city on a hill,
an exceptionalist power not subject to the rules that govern everyone
else.
Worst of all, if there are root causes of terrorism, and certain
U.S. policies contribute to them, the United States would need to
reexamine, and perhaps adjust some of its behavior patterns. For
instance, the United States might consider cutting its support for
corrupt dictatorships around the world, reducing its oil imports
from places like Saudi Arabia, changing its policy towards the Arab-Israeli
conflict, even re-examining the U.S- and Western-dominated, globalized,
profoundly unequal world economic system.
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, even suggesting such things
could easily get one branded as a "traitor" by extreme
right-wingers like Ann Coulter and Jerry Falwell. These were the
people, remember, who said that we should "invade their countries,
kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity" (Coulter),
and who blamed "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists,
and the gays and the lesbians" for 9/11 (Falwell). We proceed
here, then, at the risk of earning Ann Coulter's and Jerry Falwell's
wrath.
First, the international panel of terrorism experts found the widespread
belief that terrorists are "insane" or "irrational"
actors to be incorrect. Insane people don't normally travel thousands
of miles to crash themselves into buildings unless they have a damned
good reason, at least from their own perspective, and the ability
to carry out their plan. This requires at least a degree of sanity,
planning, and rationality. And, as far as we know, none of the 9/11
hijackers was clinically "insane," none had been released
recently from mental hospitals, and none had shown any other signs
of emotional "craziness" or "irrationality"
of which we are aware. At a minimum, then, at least some of the
9/11 hijackers must have felt that fighting America was a cause
for which killing and dying made sense. Perhaps we would benefit
from thinking about why that might have been the case.
How about the widespread belief that suicide terrorism is a product
of Islam per se? That's a false one too, according to the international
terrorism panel, and even -- to paraphrase Ann Coulter -- "slanderous."
What is true, however, is that most 9/11 hijackers were adherents
of the rabidly fundamentalist strain of Islam known as Wahhabism.
This fundamentalist brand of Islam is far from the dominant strain
in the Muslim world, but our great ally Saudi Arabia uses part of
the oil money we send it when we fill up our SUVs and Hummers in
order to export Wahhabism, with its crude anti-Semitism and anti-Westernism,
around the world.
What about the liberal notion that poverty and terrorism are linked?
According to the terrorism panel, this relationship is "weak
and indirect" at best. A more direct link than poverty is income
inequality. A world in which 20 percent of the people hold 80 percent
of the wealth and consume 80 percent of the resources is not likely
to be a stable place to live. It is also not sustainable, environmentally
or otherwise. As The Atlantic's Robert Kaplan summarizes, "in
the developing world environmental stress will present people with
a choice that is increasingly among totalitarianism (as in Iraq),
fascist-tending mini-states (as in Serb-held Bosnia), and road-warrior
cultures (as in Somalia)." And as Klaus Toepfer, head of the
UN Environment Programme, has stated, "desperate people can
resort to desperate solutions. They may care little about themselves
and the people they hurt."
Finally, how about the Bush/right-wing view that terrorism is the
result of a simplistic, mechanical cause-and-effect relationship?
Well…no. Actually, according to the panel, terrorists are actors
capable of nuance, making choices based on "the limitations
and possibilities of the situation" in order "to achieve
political objectives."
Several possible root causes of terrorism that the Bush Administration
certainly doesn't want to talk about were identified by the terrorism
experts' report:
"lack of democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of
law";
apid modernization and a "dissolution of traditional
norms and social patterns";
hegemony and inequality of power, where one power -- the
United States in the current international system -- possesses overwhelming
power compared to other actors, and where "the latter see no
other realistic ways to forward their cause by normal political
or military means";
"powerful external actors upholding illegitimate governments";
"historical antecedents of political violence, civil
wars, revolutions, dictatorships or occupation"; and
"failure … by the state to integrate dissident
groups or emerging social classes," which leads educated young
people with few job prospects to seek alternative forms of expressing
their frustration, such as violence and terror.
Lack of democracy and civil liberties is a characteristic of many
major U.S. allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, home countries
to all the 9/11 hijackers. The U.S. role here is in buying these
countries' oil (Saudi Arabia), providing billions of dollars per
year in civilian and military aid (Egypt), and by helping to prop
up unpleasant regimes that are hated by the local populations.
Rapid modernization and dissolution of "traditional values"
is a major issue for many countries, particularly those in the Muslim
and Arab worlds. In these countries, people are proud of their heritage,
their religion, and especially their language. Many people in these
countries feel that they are under assault by U.S.-led, English-language,
capitalistic globalization. Sure, Egyptians and Saudis may tune
in to "Baywatch" and MTV, and they may even enjoy them,
but there is also an underlying sadness and anger at the loss of
Arab and Muslim cultural identity.
This anger is exacerbated by the (correct) perception that the
United States represents an overwhelming economic, cultural, political,
and military power in today's world. With no counterbalancing force,
the United States ends up being blamed for many frustrations and
grievances, even those with which it has had nothing to do. Many
people see no way to stand up to the United States by conventional
means, to gain a foothold in the global economy, or even to make
movies in their own language. That leads to anger and, in some cases,
violent rage.
This rage is fueled even further by perceived U.S. support for
nasty, corrupt, authoritarian, violent "anti-communist"
regimes and dictators over the past several decades. The United
States, a powerful external actor, is also blamed for past wars,
dictatorships, and oppression by tyrannical regimes. This is not
just a false perception. For instance, in 1991 the United States
encouraged Shi'ites in southern Iraq to rise up against Saddam Hussein
following the Gulf War. When they did, tens of thousands of Shi'ites
were slaughtered -- predictably -- by Saddam Hussein's forces, while
the United States stood by and did nothing. Families of the victims
undoubtedly have not forgotten this U.S. inaction.
Finally, the failure of many U.S.-allied regimes to provide their
burgeoning, youthful populations with opportunities for economic
and political expression is often blamed on the United States specifically
and the West in general. This may not be completely fair, but on
the other hand, the rich, industrialized nations spend hundreds
of billions of dollars per year subsidizing their agricultural sectors,
driving many developing countries' farm sectors out of business.
Protectionist measures in the textile, steel, and other sectors
of industrialized countries also are not imaginary, and there is
no doubt that these help to keep imports from developing countries
out, removing yet another potential source of economic growth and
jobs.
In short, the 9/11 attacks, while in no way morally justifiable,
are very much explainable upon careful reflection and study, as
the conference in New York City this week proves. In spite of the
Bush Administration's desperate denials and delusions, there really
are root causes of terrorism, there really are more shades of gray
than the right wing's infantile black and white worldview allows,
and there really are some problems that can't be solved with a few
guided missiles and B-1 bombers.
Unfortunately, the world after 9/11 remains a deeply unhealthy
place, with America -- the sole superpower -- still not fully grasping
its own predicament. This situation is very unfortunate, because
the root causes of terrorism are not going to get any better on
their own, and if not addressed forcefully will pose a continuing
threat to U.S. national security.
 About
Lowell Feld
As a child, Lowell Feld's ambitions were to be rich, famous, and
politically powerful. In his 20s and 30s, he decided to settle for
sexy and popular while paying off the exorbitant loans from his
Ivy League education and Masters Degree in Middle East Studies.
Now, at age 40, and having achieved absolutely none of his goals,
he sits around thinking "deep thoughts," ventures off
occasionally to backpack around Third World hellholes, and takes
out his frustrations at the world by writing for snarky Web 'zines
like Gusto.
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