[lit-ideas] Re: Five Years Ago
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 13:36:22 -0500
LH:
>> Well, let's look at how Mike intended the term "root cause." He didn't
>> specify, but I took him to be using the old Leftist idea that Capitalism
>> causes proletarian revolutions, and the "so-called" Islamist unrest is at
>> root just such an one. The U.S. was out in the world plying its greedy
>> Capitalistic trade and on 9/11, the chickens came home to roost. <<
There you go again. I wrote that 5 years ago I thought and still think: "That
none of the root causes of 9/11 would be addressed." How in God's name you
transformed that into "proletarian revolutions" and chickens coming home to
roost is beyond my wildest imaginings. First, let me congratulate you on your
vivid imagination. Second, let me point out that I wrote "causes", not 'cause'
because I suspect there are many causes for Islamic terrorism as for any human
behavior. Religious fundamentalism certainly plays a part in that. So does
the anger engendered by the decades of humiliation suffered under colonialists.
So too the psychological vertigo induced by the sudden (for that culture
especially) changes thrust upon them by the world at large. And I'm sure there
are many, many more reasons that go into the making of a terrorist. Some of
those reasons, I have no doubt, arise from the basest aspects of human
perversity, some terrorists are terrorists because they are psychopaths, some,
no doubt, are seeking their own death and so forth. Your Qutbian jihadism, I
would venture, is a symptom, not a cause. I could be wrong, of course. Maybe
hundreds of thousands of people have been persuaded to go get killed. In which
case, Qutb should have been in advertising. Think what he could have done for
the Marines! But what disappoints me, Lawrence, is that the Bush
Administration doesn't seem to care why there are terrorists. They thought
they could just stomp them out. Instead they have created millions more.
Mike Geary
Memphis
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