October 05, 2001
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:More on counter-tribalism
In a column titled Yes, but What? (free NYT registration required), Thomas Friedman also attacks the notion that this was our fault:
One can only be amazed at the ease with which some people abroad and at campus teach-ins now tell us what motivated the terrorists. Guess what? The terrorists didn't leave an explanatory note. Because their deed was their note: We want to destroy America, starting with its military and financial centers. Which part of that sentence don't people understand?
He goes on to expose the myth, encouraged by that horribly patronizing "very special" West Wing episode, that people become terrorists from abject poverty. Most of the hijackers were middle-class Saudis and Egyptians. These are, relatively speaking, elites looking to force their view of the world on others. It is the attraction of the "infidel" West to the poorer people in their country that infuriates them.
The people who did this dream of a grand autocracy, with themselves as elites. Western cultural and economic liberalism has an irresistible attraction to all their potential subjects, who emigrate to the West in enormous numbers and succeed. However falsely, terrorists are those who see the West's gain as their loss, which is classic zero-sum thinking. That's why they want to blow us away.
Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at October 5, 2001 08:11 AM | Technorati inbound links