Christopher Hitchens on the Bali Bombings
Wednesday, October 5th, 2005 9:56 am by NealChristopher Hitchens, writing on slate.com, has an essay on the Bali bombings entitled, Why Ask Why? Terrorist attacks aren’t caused by any policy except that of the bombers themselves. Do you think Islamic terrorism is caused by Western Foreign policy? Do you know people who think the terrorists would “go away” if Israel gave the Palestinians more land? Read Hitchens for a spoonful of reality.
Consider this, look again at the awful carnage in Bali, and shudder if you ever said, or thought, that the bombs in London in July, or the bombs in Baghdad every day, or the bombs in Bali last Friday, are caused by any “policy” but that of the bombers themselves. Note the following:
1) East Timor was for many years, and quite rightly, a signature cause of the Noam Chomsky “left.” The near-genocide of its people is an eternal stain on Indonesia and on the Western states that were complicit or silent. Yet Bin Ladenism wants not less of this killing and repression but more. Its demand to re-establish the caliphate is a pro-imperialist demand, not an anti-imperialist one.
2) Random bombings are not a protest against poverty and unemployment. They are a cause of poverty and unemployment and of wider economic dislocation.
3) Hinduism is considered by Bin Ladenists to be a worse heresy even than Christianity or Judaism or Shiism, and its adherents, whether in Bali or Kashmir, are fit only for the edge of the sword. So, it is absurd to think of jihadism—which murders the poor and the brown without compunction—as a movement against the rich and the “white.”
So, what did Indonesia do to deserve this, or bring it on itself? How will the slaughter in Bali improve the lot of the Palestinians? Those who look for the connection will be doomed to ask increasingly stupid questions and to be content with increasingly wicked answers.