Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Mr. Hannity blurs this crucial distinction between means and ends, arguing that the use of such brutally evil attacks on civilians must indicate an evil underlying goal. He never considers the possibility that America's own aggression provokes terrorism and gives it its raison d'etre; our foreign policy, not our freedom or religion, is the real target of "Muslim" terrorists. They focus their attacks on the US, Israel, and our economic allies (what I term the US-Israeli circle) because of their longtime exploitation and manipulation of the peoples of Asia and Latin America. If the US were to reorient its policy in a fairer and more upright direction, the terrorists would be appeased.  

A prominent example of our self-serving foreign policy behavior is given by Iran some decades ago. Members of the CIA clandestinely overthrew the popular Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadiq in 1953 and established Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi firmly in power. Though popular at first, the Shah eventually emerged as a cruel, intensely unpopular dictator who suspended the constitution, who tortured opponents of his regime, who forced Muslim children to attend secular state-run schools, and whose giant Western corporations forced millions of peasants off their farms yet kept oil flowing to the West. Since the shah was America's pawn, we did not overthrow him as he deserved; but the Iranian people rose up together and defeated him without our help--indeed, despite our best efforts to secure him in power.

Unfortunately, that is not the whole story. While American culture was obviously imported to Iran via the oil companies and other big businesses, there is something about our culture so obvious it has completely escaped Mr. Hannity's attention. Along with Big Macs and Coca-Cola dispensers, Western CEOs brought in abortion, contraception, euthanasia, nightclubs, dirty magazines, offensive clothing fashions, bad movies, and satanic music. Few stop to think about, or even realize, this part of the story. Devout Muslims and terrorists alike hate all this evil. It angers them. America's own immorality lights the extremely flammable fires of Islamic righteous indignation which now slowly threatens the West.

How soon we forget that the World Trade Center, the proud symbol of our economic dominance, was situated on US soil. The United States of America has long been the center of the world economy. Moreover, since the end of the Cold War the US-Israeli circle has been utilizing the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to relentlessly push the deceptive phenomenon of "free trade", which has proven to be a counterfeit. Instead of opening up new entrepreneurial opportunities to hundreds of millions of private citizens in the countries participating in it, unfettered globalization has permitted a few dozen Western mega-corporations to expand, dominate and manipulate national economies to a degree unprecedented in world history. This system may have created millions of new low-wage jobs abroad, but it has also created a new, exclusive billionaire class in the West; forced hundreds of thousands of local smaller businesses to close; generated an ever larger and ever poorer worldwide underclass; harmed the global natural environment; and increased the likelihood of wars (both because force of arms is the only way to preserve unjust disparities in wealth, and because weaponry and petroleum magnates profiteer immensely from war). For the heads of these oversized companies, a continual increase of profit is the bottom line, and human beings--both laborers and consumers--are simply tools in their own global machine.  

These selfish policies have triggered two important reactions in the Middle East: first, a phenomenally widespread Muslim religious revival; second, the ever-building waves of "Islamic" extremist terrorism. For these victims of our injustice, terrorism can function as an outlet.

To conclude, I will remind Mr. Hannity of a great Catholic axiom: "If you want peace, work for justice." This is simple logic. If the US really wishes to defeat terrorism, it should take the lead in reforming the world's current economic system. This will help to foster peace and to dispel the wrath of the international "Islamic" terrorists.