Root causes? It ain't poverty. It's tyranny.
I'm trying to make it a policy not to just regurgitate what others are saying in the Blogosphere unless I have some unique perspective to add into the mix, or unless I feel there is an issue that is important enough that it bears repeating -- even to the three (count 'em) people who read this site on a semi-regular basis. This following item meets both criteria.
Earlier in the week, a study was widely reported in the mainstream press about Arab public opinion, the conclusion of which was that the US is increasingly seen in a negative light. It isn't hard to see the conclusion that many drew from this; clearly, it's US Foriegn Policy© again, fertilizing the little terrorist seeds in the desert, and if we'd just plain Knock It Off, the worst we'd have to worry about is Eric Robert Rudolph and the occasional McVeigh.
I read about this poll and immediately thought: well, obviously.
What else would you think about the US over there? It's not like here, where there are so many competing sides to the story, it's hard to tell who's telling the truth. Al Jazeera was supposed to be an objective bastion of free Arab journalism, but it was shown pretty clearly what a joke it was when the Americans rolled into Baghdad -- even as Al Jazeera reporters were claiming that we were being defeated left and right.
Just last week, the editor of Saudi Arabia's Al Watan newspaper was fired -- fired -- for daring to criticize the state of the regime there. Meanwhile, the same people that kicked him out of his job continue to let the Wahhabi schools do their thing, teaching the kids that the US is the Great Satan. So that's okay. But criticizing the leadership ain't. Same goes for Iran, where you can get sentenced to death if you question the authority of the mullahocracy.
The regimes obviously have their reasons. They don't want to get their butts thrown out of power. When you repress a people, you've always got to watch your back. And if you can redirect the people's restlessness and ill-will towards a third party, say Eurasia the US, you kill two birds with one stone. You set up the conditions such that the media, if they want to keep their jobs (or their lives), are all too eager to rail against the horrors of the Great Satan, while paying no attention to the more immediate, direct causes of the suffering that these people have to go through: your own regime.
The point is: this poll is not news. It's just a natural effect of what you'd expect to see in a place where the information is tightly controlled and dissent is snuffed out -- quite literally, not in the Michael-Moore-Tim-Robbins-Dixie-Chicks-crushing-of-dissent-means-having-my-album-sales-drop-and-no-one-wants-to-see-my-movies way. Where others read this poll and see us being at fault, I see it as another indictment of the terrible regimes these people have to live under, where, at best, you don't even get the other side of the story, and at worst, you get fed a steady diet of anti-US rhetoric because it suits the purposes of the Powers That Be.
So it's nice to see that someone with credentials agrees with me (I wonder if the term "street cred" is ever floated in academic circles?). Take a look-see.
Instead of viewing terrorism as a response -- either direct or indirect -- to poverty or ignorance, we suggest that it is more accurately viewed as a response to political conditions and longstanding feelings of indignity and frustration that have little to do with economic circumstances. We suspect that is why international terrorist acts are more likely to be committed by people who grew up under repressive political regimes.
Posted by Matt at June 6, 2003 6:24 PM
