The Brutes’ Roots We, the

The Brutes’ Roots

We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have been lucky enough to be the recipients of much wisdom regarding the current War on Terrorism from our friends on the Left. To be sure, many of these nuggets of knowledge have been fairly obvious: The best way to fight terrorism is to appease its proponents at every turn; Syria is a wonderful country that has been alienated by our unsavory tactics; &c. Oftentimes, however, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” hear the exact same solution from our left-leaning comrades: The United States must examine the “root causes” of terrorism. Now, this whole “root causes” spiel appears a little odd to us, because it always seems as if our friends on the Left—though they exhort us to examine the “root causes”—already know exactly what they are. And, curiously, the “root causes” turn out to be—mirabile dictu—the political causes that the Left championed before the War on Terrorism began. Strangely, then, the political Left understood the solution to the problem before the problem existed. Some of the more skeptical readers among you may be thinking that the Left doesn’t give a jot about the causes of terrorism—root or otherwise. In fact, the phrase “root causes” appears to be a pithy way of hiding what the Left really means: Placing the Trendy Theories of the Left on Whatever Problem That Occurs in the World, Regardless of How They Fit in Their Given Contexts. We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” can certainly appreciate why our leftist friends prefer the “root causes” locution: The other one is so much clunkier. Still, we think that the latter phrase, whatever its demerits in the realm of catchiness, proves far more truthful. For instance, our friends on the Left are always positing economic inequality as one of the mysterious “root causes.” This seems strange: Last we checked, Osama bin Laden and his mostly American-educated henchmen didn’t strike us as particularly impoverished. In fact, if bin Laden is a beacon of poverty, we’d like to sign up on the poor list. Naturally, those who prattle on about “root causes” are not particularly interested in listening to the remarks of Osama bin Laden and other terrorists of his ilk. (Ooh, did we say “terrorists”? Pardon us, Reuters readers, we meant “militants.”) Indeed, Mr. bin Laden has many complaints to make, but he doesn’t appear particularly upset by economic inequality. That probably comes with the whole I’m-a-billionaire thing. But why, we ask, should anyone on the political Left actually listen to the terrorists, when they have so much more fun attributing their own gripes to them? Why not make Osama bin Laden deeply upset about America’s bad record with recycling and insufficient regard for feminism? Or how about the ozone layer?: We haven’t read much on the subject, but we are pretty sure that this is what really gets Hamas’ dander up.

Posted at July 19, 2004 12:01 AM | TrackBack