...but as he went along, I found him slipping from analysis toward more of a rant. He does a good job of illustrating the problem of trying to prevent terror.
I've always felt that the best way of dealing with terror is *not* let it control our actions -- that we should take prudent precautions, but not pretend that we can ever entirely prevent it from happening. Terrorism, as LeVine pointed out, works by making the world fear it. Minimize our unrealistic reactions to terrorism and we take away its power over us.
By the end of LeVine's article, though, I felt like he was kinda getting off the point, plugging in his own simplistic notions of cause and effect to smoke-screen his pointed finger of blame. He seemed to have criticism for everyone other than the organization who continues to send its members out to blow up people.
He dislikes British Imperialism, likening it to American Imperialism, then blames both for poverty and corruption in the rest of the world. He's got something of a point, but the underwear bomber came from a wealthy family and LeVine really stretches his credulity (in my opinion) by suggesting a neat psychological profile of the bomber that fits into his own (LeVine's) argument.
LeVine's concern with imperialism seems to conveniently forget that Al Quaeda surged into prominence on the world stage *before* the US invaded Iraq (and here, I'm not including Gulf War I, since we didn't stay in Iraq then and Al Quaeda wasn't a factor in that war). Sure, the latest Iraq War was, in retrospect, not a very good idea, but Al Quaeda brought terror to the forefront of world politics all on their own. If anything, it was Cold War imperialism and politics that set the stage for Al Quaeda's growth in the Middle East.
But even then, the world's political stage is a lot more complex than that. There are a lot of factors, past and present, that have led us to the point we're at. Cherry-picking blame may be popular, but the problems, their causes and solutions, aren't as simple as LeVine would have us believe. |
