“Root Causes”
My blog on whining yesterday set me to thinking about the so-called “root causes of terrorism” argument that keeps popping up, that we are presently hearing applied to the Palestinians. It basically says that terrorism is caused by poverty and the violence of some enemy, and suggests by implication that the wealthy nations of the world deliberately keep the poor down. Thus, the “root cause” of terrorism is not religious fanaticism, but “inequality of wealth.”
But hold on a second. I know I read somewhere (other than evil right-wing publications) that in fact religious fanaticism was the cause. Let me see…where is that thing?…Oh, here it is! The New York Times, March 31, 2001, Letters to the Editor:
“We anxiously await prosecution of these people by Attorney General John Ashcroft's Justice Department. The public investigation of this case will also highlight the coordinated and systematic efforts of the network of religious-political extremists whose words fuel the murderous actions of the fringe element…” So religious extremists do after all egg on the fringe! Glad we cleared that up.
What’s that? What did I omit with the ellipsis? Oh, that! Nothing important really. It just tells you which fringe element the extremists belong to.
Sorry? You still want to know. Well, all right, but you’ll be disappointed.
The phrase I omitted was “of the anti-abortion movement.” The letter was signed by Joan Malin, Chief Executive of Planned Parenthood of New York City, and she was referring to the arrest of a fugitive clinic bomber and a couple who helped him.
Understand? Religious fanatics exist, and even multiculturalists in Manhattan can see them, when they threaten things that matter to multiculturalists in Manhattan. Christian fundamentalists don’t challenge the accepted worldview of the US (and Israel by proxy) as the source of most of the suffering and evil in the world. But take it out of New York and into the Middle East and “there’s terror on both sides” as so many Op-Ed columnists have opined in recent days.
Of course abortion clinic bombers are evil. Many are also deranged. And of course, in most cases, they exist in and are supported by a web of religious fanatics, who believe they are doing “God’s work.” No wonder so many Bishops and ministers take to the airwaves to denounce the psychotics, whenever one acts, lest the clergy be lumped in with them. The fanatics have lost the ability to distinguish situations in which violence is justified from when it is not, and so come to see violence as always justified.
In the case of abortion, so long as we live in a constitutional system, there is hope for opponents of abortion that amendments and laws may succeed in banning or greatly reducing it. Legitimate political activism can also reduce doctors’ willingness to provide abortion, and curbside counseling can help women “choose life,” as the slogan has it. In short, a host of nonviolent means exist.
The political systems of the Middle East offer no such alternatives. Try proposing a constitutional amendment in Saudi Arabia. Try suggesting that Arafat abide by his constitutional term (which expired sometime before the Millennium). Sadly, however, even in this case, the violence isn’t justified. First, because it is deliberately directed at civilians, and second, because it is not directed at those who are doing the oppressing. Create an open society, and the mothers who are hoping their children will blow themselves up will begin to hope for better things.
As for the anti-abortion murderers, they are no more likely to disappear entirely than the Islamofascists. Both can be moved to the fringe, and become irrelevant; though not silent, less terrible; isolated instead of coordinated. It can be brought about by the pro-abortion fanatics (who are not, by the way, entirely the same thing as the pro-choice movement). Stop opposing reasonable restrictions as though they were an end to liberty. Stop arguing that a 13-year old girl who can’t get an aspirin from the school nurse without a note from home ought to be able to undergo surgery in secret.* Stop arguing that sucking out the brain of an infant three-quarters out of the birth canal is just another medical procedure. Stop executing smear campaigns against people running for dogcatcher because the candidate is pro-life. In short, stop acting as fanatical about abortion as the bombers.
As Edward Rothstein noted on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times on November 17, “The injustice theory is apparently invoked only when one sympathizes with its conclusions.” If we can recognize that in the case of abortion clinic bombers, or Timothy McVeigh, we should recognize it in the case of Al Qaeda and Israel.
*Just as an aside, it would be interesting to correlate schools with zero-tolerance policies (whereby a student with two aspirin can be suspended for long periods or even expelled, as though aspirin were crack) with those that distribute birth control pills from the nurse's office. I doubt there are many that do the latter, but I bet the number is greater than zero.
