Rushdie's Rhetoric and Righteous Response

Why Rushdie is wrong, and a further attempt to understand the sources of terrorism.



Rushdie's Rhetoric and Righteous Response
By Dru Oja Jay

Let's be clear about why this bien-pensant anti-American onslaught is such
appalling rubbish. Terrorism is the murder of the innocent; this time, it
was mass murder. To excuse such an atrocity by blaming U.S. government
policies is to deny the basic idea of all morality: that individuals are
responsible for their actions. -- [1]Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie's statement is wrong in a very obvious way. Simply, no one on
the left, bien pensant or otherwise, has tried to excuse the actions of the
terrorists. Indeed, it is hard to conceive of anyone in their right mind not
condemning acts which led to thousands of needless deaths. If he isn't aware
of this, then he should stop speaking about things he doesn't understand. If
he is aware of this, then his comments are malicious, as they equate the
desire to understand a situation with its endorsement; a rather dangerous
equation which shuts us off from seeking any truth but that which appears to
be self-evident (as decided by people like Salman Rushdie, evidently).

However, Rushdie's comments are also wrong in a more subtle way, which
merits clarification. The terrorists, he says, are responsible for their own
actions, a statement that's hard to disagree with. The problem is that it
ignores the context which makes their decisions and actions possible and
intelligible. A context which is, ironically, analogous in many ways to the
current situation in the US.

On September 10th George W. Bush was not, by most measures, an especially
popular president. Had he asked for an additional $40 billion for the
defense spending, it's doubtful he would have received it. After September
11th, however, procuring such vast resources for a military retaliation
seemed like an afterthought. And public support couldn't be higher.

Now, imagine the situation in any number of Islamic countries. Islamic
fundamentalism aside, when Muslims hear of friends and family being shot in
the Gaza Strip, starved in Iraq, and bombed in Sudan and now Afghanistan,
they are likely to be pissed off at the people who did it -- in this case,
the US and UK militaries under orders from their commanders-in-chief. There
will be many, even a majority of people who support retaliation of some
kind. as is presently the case in the US. Since it would be pure suicide for
a small country to attack the US outright -- or, indeed, even to suggest
such an act -- these frustrated, terrorized people look elsewhere to devote
these resources.

Fundamentalist groups and terrorist organizations do not exist in isolation
from the rest of the world. Their existence and the support they receive
reflect certain attitudes of the people who surround them. These attitudes,
in turn, stem in no small measure from US and US-sponsored terrorism against
these same people.

With that understanding, it's not altogether hard to imagine that an
effective way to remove the support of these organization would be to remove
the cause of the grievous outrage: to stop terrorizing. By contrast, an
attempt to "root out" the terrorists will, insofar as it terrorizes innocent
people, only serve to increase their sense of outrage and their willingess
to support further retaliations.

 References:
   1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55876-2001Oct1.html



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Posted on Monkeyfist at http://monkeyfist.com/articles/788