The root cause that Obama will reveal to a waiting world

If past is prologue, if what Obama has said before is a guide to what he will say now, then Michael Goldfarb at The Weekly Standard has figured out what Obama will discover to be the “root” cause of the Fort Hood massacre:

It looks like the man who killed 13 soldiers and police at Ft. Hood was a Muslim radical who hated America, resented our occupation of Muslim lands, would not be photographed with women, and chanted “Allahu Akbar” before he launched a one-man terrorist attack, but according to CBS White House Correspondent Mark Knoller, Obama wants to know what really made him do it:

Obama said he met today with FBI Director et al to discuss “what caused one individual to turn his gun on fellow servicemen and women.”

It’s hard not to be reminded of Obama’s famous post-9/11 remarks, which first came to light in the New Yorker last summer. This from a speech the week after the attacks in which he likewise wanted to know, what would cause a bunch of Muslim fanatics to fly airplanes into American buildings:

We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.

You have to wonder: Will Obama still find that the fundamental tragedy was not the murder of 13 Americans at the hands of a terrorist, but the failure of our society to address his grievances before he was forced to turn to violence? Are we still to blame for our indifference to poverty, ignorance, helplessness and despair?

[end of Goldfarb article]

In short, Muslim terrorism exists because the West is insufficiently progressive. If all people’s needs were truly taken care of, if all people, especially Muslims, were lifted out of poverty, ignorance, helplessness and despair, which are the root causes of terrorism, then terrorism would end. How else can a dyed-in-the-wool liberal like Obama see it? The evil of terrorism can’t possibly be something voluntarily chosen by the Muslims themselves; such a notion would remove the onus on conservative whites who truly are the source of all evil in the world, as Obama learned at the feet of Jeremiah Wright for 20 years. To say that Muslims, on their own initiative and choice, and not pushed by some external force, believe in doing these bad things, would cancel the liberal and black belief that all evil comes from whites. Obama’s entire world view is grounded in the conviction of white guilt and nonwhite innocence. Therefore, whatever root cause he finds, we can reasonably predict that the root cause will not be that Muslims believe in a god who commands them to wage holy war against non-Muslims, and that Nidal Hasan was putting this holy war into practice. If Obama says this or anything like it, I will fall on the floor.

- end of initial entry -

Jonathan L. writes:

Have I never confessed to you that I voted for Obama in the last election? I voted for him solely because I felt the country could not stand four more years of Bush style “conservative” foreign policy, and to me McCain seemed more “Bushian” than Bush in his commitment to wildly reckless neoconservatism. After the recent Iranian election unrest I felt vindicated in my choice, as I have no doubt that in contrast to Obama’s commendable aloofness, McCain would have attempted some sort of harebrained military intervention on the assumption that the majority of “freedom-loving” Iranians would rally to our cause.

I’d be as floored as you if Obama discerned the truth in the Fort Hood Massacre, but given his high intelligence I wouldn’t be surprised if with more experience be began to come around. After all, in the post-9/11 speech that you cite Obama lays out a complex syllogism and successfully follows it to its conclusion (given his questionable premises, of course). Isn’t this an improvement from a president who governed solely from the “gut” and could probably not even pronounce syllogism?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 07, 2009 12:03 PM | Send