Stardate 20020922.1206

(Captain's log): Steve writes:

I get the impression from your article that you do not buy the theory that past American foreign policy is in any way to blame for the 9-11 attacks.

Not in any important regard, anyway. (But let's be clear that I'm not saying that American foreign policy hasn't included cruelty, shortsightedness, stupidity and hypocrisy. All of those have been present in abundance.)

You yourself clearly demonstrate that past deeds can provoke rage and hatred. You seem to hate the "Arab Traditionalist" culture which carried out 9-11. You have called for its annihilation. You have clearly stated on a recent post that you HATED Yasser Arafat. I suspect you hate these people not so much for what they are as WHAT THEY HAVE DONE.

I hate Arafat. But I'm not in Israel with a sniper's rifle hunting him. I'm not planning surreptitious bombings of Palestinian stores and schools and buses. I'm not burning mosques in the US.

So why is it so hard for you to accept that the terrorists who carried out 9-11, who train and plot even now to make more attacks, hate the United States for what it has done in the past? Namely the propping up oppressive regimes, the arming of these regimes, and by being an arrogant hypocritical bully who preaches freedom, justice, and openness, but practices it not in foreign policy toward the Mideast?

I fully believe that our foreign policy is part of the reason they hate us, but I'm certain that it isn't the reason they became terrorists.

Have you heard of the great french fry peril? Consider this: every single convicted murderer in the US ate french fries before committing murder! It's obvious that french fries must be implicated in their crimes, isn't it?

Well, no, not really. A lot of other people have eaten french fries without descending to a life of crime.

Do the Arabs who became terrorists think of themselves as being victims of American foreign policy? Certainly. But they're not the only ones who have thought of themselves that way, and no one else seems to be doing it. Where are the Chilean terrorists? The Argentine ones? Angolan? Burmese? Vietnamese? (Surely the Vietnamese have a lot bigger cause for anger at us than the Arabs do.)

None of them are terrorists. It's Arabs. Only Arabs. So there must be something about Arabs which is different from the Vietnamese and Burmese and Angolans and Chileans, all of whom have been shafted at least as badly by American foreign policy without turning to terrorism.

And you go further and accuse the liberals--who believe that American behavior is a HUGE factor in the behavior of our enemies--of some kind of belief in karma, and some kind of supernatural cosmic justice. As a liberal atheist myself, I believe in cause and effect, not karma. 9-11 was the effect, American foreign policy was one of the causes. I'm not denying that Barbie dolls, blue jeans, and the spread of the American secular culture is ALSO a cause. But you seem to believe it is the only cause worth addressing.

Actually, I don't think Barbie dolls and blue jeans are part of the problem, either, though they'll be part of the solution.

The problem is Arab failure, Arab frustration and resentment, and Arab unwillingness to accept the true reason for their failure. (Note: some Arabs, not all.) That's what's different about the Arabs by comparison to the Chileans and Vietnamese. The Chileans and Vietnamese are working on fixing their problems.

Do you think that by granting American foreign policy the status of CAUSE, you grant the terrorists a victory?

I don't care whether it does. What I'm concerned about is that plans which are based on a false evaluation of causes don't succeed except by luck. If we base our strategy for this war on the false assumption that American foreign policy was the primary cause, we'll lose. That's what's important to me.

Arab frustration and resentment isn't going to go away if we reform our foreign policy, because it is ultimately based not on what we do and not even really on our success, but rather on their failure. And the only thing we can do to make them cease to be failures is to force them to make the reforms which will remove the causes within their society that is making them fail. Altering our foreign policy won't do that.

Or rather, it will. But that's because our foreign policy is about to become a lot more interventionist, which is not (I suspect) quite what you had in mind.