The real root cause of terrorism.
Noam Chomsky and many others have blamed terrorist acts on “root causes,” but that argument is now coming under increasing stress as terrorists claim justification for their killings from the liberation of East Timor. (*) (†)
As a frequently published writer, Noam Chomsky’s various political stances are a matter of public knowledge. Chomsky was long a supporter of the liberation of East Timor from the genocide carried out by the Indonesian army that killed over 200,000. East Timor is mostly Christian and Indonesia is mostly Muslim, but until recently that was not a widely observed factual contrast. The liberation of East Timor was accomplished thanks to a UN intervention, primarily backed by the Australian military. Chomsky has stated his pleasure in knowing that East Timor is free. (‡) Nevertheless, Chomsky has refused to take a position on whether the UN intervention itself was justified, as Christopher Hitchens has noted. (§) Why has Chomsky refused to take a position? The answer is so far unclear. Today, East Timor is a free and sovereign state.
Chomsky has said that the 9/11 attack had its root causes. (**) Specifically, the terrorists were reacting to an unjust US foreign policy. By extension of this logic, other terrorist acts, such as the Bali attacks, should also have root causes in other injustices. The Bali bombings killed over 180 people and wounded hundreds more. Australia bore the brunt of the attacks, suffering more deaths among its nationals than any other nation; more than 80 Australians were killed.
Osama Bin Laden, or someone in the Al Qaeda leadership pretending to be him, has now stated on a recent audiotape given to the media that the Bali killings were specifically motivated by the independence of East Timor. Bin Laden himself believed that East Timor was properly part of Indonesia, and should not have been allowed to declare independence. On the audiotape translated by the BBC, the Enemy leader, Bin Laden or otherwise, states:
We warned Australia before not to join in [the war] in Afghanistan, and [against] its despicable effort to separate East Timor.
It ignored the warning until it woke up to the sounds of explosions in Bali.
Its government falsely claimed that they [the Australians] were not targeted.
(††) Now that the root cause of the Bali attacks is known to be the liberation of East Timor, Chomsky finds himself in an uncomfortable position.
The very independence of East Timor that Chomsky worked so hard for, and praised so highly, has been claimed by terrorists as the root cause of their actions, even as Chomsky says that injustice is the root cause of their actions. Instead of citing to an injustice, the Enemy leader is citing to an act of liberation as his pretext for mass killing. Chomsky’s position is not tenable.
Just as Chomsky’s position no longer has intellectual respectability, neither does that of others who make similar claims. As we now know, thanks to the Enemy leader’s message, terrorism’s root cause is not injustice. Instead, the root cause of terrorism appears to be something that most people around the world deeply cherish: freedom. The terrorists say they are attacking us because we favor freedom and have flatly said so. Therefore we ought to defend ourselves from the enemy’s onslaught.
Adapted from a post to Democratic Left. Last updated on 2 December 2002 to clarify that it is not material whether the audiotape was actually made by Osama Bin Laden, or another member of Al Qaeda’s leadership.
Update: 20 June 2003: I just found an interview of Chomsky, dated 8 November 2002, where he discusses the Bali bombing. He says:
QUESTION: Is the “war on terrorism” a manifestation of the “Frankenstein syndrome,” meaning that the US is now having to protect itself from enemies that it has created?
CHOMSKY: That’s happening, but let’s be a little bit clearer. The war on terrorism was declared in 1981, by pretty much the exact same people who redeclared it after Sept. 11, and with the same rhetoric. The war on terrorism has been going on for twenty years. Orwell would tell us that the war on terrorism is in fact a terrorist war. In the first phase in the war on terrorism led by the people in Washington throughout the 1980s, the US carried out massive terrorist atrocities in Central America, the Middle East, Southern Africa, and so on. That was the first phase in the war on terror. The second phase, that they redeclared on Sept. 11, happened to be aimed at organizations that you describe. The terrorists are now those recruited, trained, organized, and armed by the CIA and its associates in the 1980s, not to help the Afghans, but for reasons of state, power, the usual kinds. Yes, in around 1990, they turned against the US for reasons they described. This is not anything particularly new. In 1993, related groups came very close to blowing up the World Trade Center. According to the WTC engineers, if they had a little better planning, they would have killed tens of thousands of people. That’s in 1993, not 2001. Those groups happened to be organized by the West.
You can say the same about plenty of others. Take Israel’s main terrorist enemies — Hezbollah and Hamas. Where did they come from? In part, the origins of Hamas lie in Israeli sponsorship of radical Islamist groups to undermine the secular Palestinian leadership. Hezbollah came out of a US-backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon twenty years ago which killed about 20,000 people, and had no defensive purpose whatsoever — it was barely even pretended. It was an attempt to undermine the secular PLO because its efforts at negotiation were becoming difficult to handle. The end result is that it helped create Hezbollah. Incidentally, terrorist acts are just a gift to the most hard-line oppressive elements. An increase in terrorism gives Sharon an opportunity to drive the Palestinians out, it gives the Russians an opportunity to clamp down in Chechnya, and so on throughout the world.
It’s very probable that the same thing is going on in Indonesia now. What was behind the Bali bombing is not yet clear, but chances are it was the Jamat al Islamaya. But where did they come from? They’re part of the effort of the Suharto dictatorship — with the backing of the United States, Britain and others — to link up radical Islamists and the Indonesian military to carry out terrorist atrocities against their own populations. In fact, the big massacres in Bali, far worse than this one, were in fact a combination of Islamist groups and the army. Those things happen pretty commonly.
(‡‡) That’s very interesting. Chomsky is saying that the “war on terrorism” began in 1981. Thus, the 9/11 attacks would be part of this “war.” The Bali bombings may have been carried out by Jemaah Islamiah, which is sometimes thought to be a branch of Al Qaeda. Furthermore, like Chomsky’s view of Al Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiah is a creation of the people it is now fighting. All of that is wrong, but that doesn’t stop him from prattling on. Most notably, Chomsky forgets to mention that Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah are cold-blooded murderers.
Chomsky’s modus operandi should by now be apparent. First, Chomsky ascribes to terrorists a motivation (such as a list of grievances). Then, he condemns what the terrorists do (such as murder). Next, he condemns taking military action against terrorists, saying that is unjustified. Nevertheless, what the terrorists do is condemned, and thus we must do something. Thus, he supports using law enforcement to capture the terrorists and detain them. Finally, he caps his argument by strongly arguing against such laws as the Patriot Act that are designed to supplement the efforts of law enforcement to capture the terrorists and detain them. In summary, Chomsky condemns terrorism, supports fighting it only in a limited manner, and would reduce our ability to fight terrorism even in that limited manner. At some point the question must cease to be what motivates the terrorists, and become what motivates Chomsky.
Chomsky recognizes legitimacy in the terrorists’ grievances. In the context of the argument he makes, Chomsky’s recognition works as an implicit blessing of terrorism.
Finally, let me emphasize that, once again, nowhere does Chomsky deal with the motivations of the Bali bombers. Once he does, he must face some deep contradictions in his thinking.
Update: 17 November 2003. Tim Blair links. (§§)