Frank’s Case Book

University of Maryland economist Julian Simon was one of those provocative people that others can rarely be neutral about. The late Dr. Simon was an environmental optimist who believed that the world was getting better and that the most obvious proof of this was the continual increase in life expectancy. He is perhaps best known for his bets with environmental doomsayers like Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb. Simon bet Ehrlich that a basket of raw materials would grow less expensive over a ten-year period, indicating these materials were becoming less scarce.  Simon won the wager. He made a number of similar such bets and he usually won.

In 1997, a self-described “old left-wing Greenpeace member” Bjørn Lomborg of the University of Aarhus, Denmark, read an interview with Simon in Wired magazine. Lomborg’s first reaction was that Simon was just spreading typical “American right-wing propaganda” which, of course, is far more dangerous than the mere garden-variety “right-wing propaganda.”

Simon disputed the conventional environmental “litany” that pessimistically sees a world where air and water pollution are relentlessly increasing, raw materials are rapidly becoming scarcer, energy grows harder to find, and the quality of life generally begins to decline. Lomborg subscribed to the litany and set out to examine commonly available data and demonstrate Simon’s error.

After considerable research aided by his students, Lomborg’s intellectual honesty forced him to adjust his view in light of evidence. He wrote a number of controversial articles in Denmark. This work grew into the comprehensive, and well-documented book, The Skeptical Environmentalist. By merging the intuition of an economist, the numerical care of a statistician, and the concern of an environmentalist, Lomborg takes a hard look at the “state of the world.”

Lomborg documents how air and water pollution are rapidly decreasing. For example, the last time the air in London was this clean was the 1500s. Fossil fuels are not becoming scarcer and will not run out in the foreseeable future. Life expectancy and health are steadily improving and this progress can be expected to continue. The Green Revolution has given us ample food, while food prices are decreasing and growth in food supplies will be sufficient to accommodate expected increases in population. More and more people have access to clean water and sanitation. The fraction of the world’s population in poverty is decreasing. Levels of education and literacy are increasing. People are generally safer and less likely to die in an accident.

One can sense in Lomborg a real disappointment with how important figures in the environmental movement have displayed either willful deception or incredible naiveté in trying to present the case that the world is becoming less hospitable. For example, Lester Brown, of the Worldwatch Institute, uses minor decreases in rice yields, associated with year-to-year fluctuations, to argue that rice yields have peaked. However, the long-term curve clearly shows increasing yields. A few years after Lester’s comments, the yields were clearly increasing again. Moreover, these sorts of errors or deceptions were not isolated to single incidents, but are repeated frequently. Honest scientists are the first ones to point out and address potential problems with their data and to offer alternative hypotheses. Lester Brown appears more like an attorney trying to win a case than a dispassionate observer.

The largest section in Lomborg’s book addresses global warming. After reviewing the evidence, Lomborg believes that there is a significant anthropogenic (man-made) component to increasing surface temperatures. Lomborg spends considerable time evaluating models for predicting future climate changes. The model problem is complex and the question of the interaction of aerosols, water vapor, and clouds are still unresolved. These models suggest a range of 1 to 5 degrees centigrade increase in temperature over this century, depending on both which model is used and which scenario is chosen in terms of growth in carbon dioxide emissions.

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an international group of scientists and others chartered “to assess the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change.” What is disconcerting is that the panel has typically assumed yearly growth rates of 0.64 percent in carbon dioxide emissions throughout this century for modeling purposes, whereas the 1980s emissions grew by 0.47 percent and by 0.43 percent in the 1990s. These small differences compounded over a century create dramatic differences in predicted climate changes. In Lomborg’s view, increases in temperature over this century will trend toward the lower end of 1 to 2 degrees centigrade.

The real questions of environmental policy are a combination of the expected costs of environmental effects versus the costs of mitigation. The logical policy is the one that minimizes the total costs of mitigation and environmental damage. Inefficient use of economic resources means there will be less to spend on other priorities like education, health, and welfare.

Coupled economic and environmental models suggest that a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions of 11 percent gradually applied over this century minimizes total costs. These reductions are far smaller than the more Draconian cuts of the Kyoto accords. The carbon dioxide restrictions of the Kyoto accords will substantially increase net world mitigation and environmental costs. Moreover, the costs of the Kyoto-level reductions could be substantially trimmed if carbon dioxide emission rights could be traded internationally, a policy that is meeting political resistance.

The question of minimizing economic costs is, of course, always open to debate as knowledge and modeling improve. Unfortunately, in its latest report, the IPCC did not provide estimates of the economic costs and benefits of abatement of carbon dioxide emissions, making it more difficult to reach a consensus on environmental policy.

In a perfect world, what could be better than if scientists found a clean, inexpensive, inexhaustible source of energy that could replace fossil fuels? At one point, we thought there was just such a possibility, as reports emerged that hydrogen fusion at room temperatures was possible, so called cold fusion. Unfortunately, it now appears these reports were premature and we cannot expect respite from this energy source in the near future.

Nonetheless, Lomborg notes that the reaction to the news by extremists in the environmental community is illuminating. Jeremy Rifkin of the Foundation on Economic Trends, thought such a development was, “the worst thing that could happen” because it would allow man to exploit the planet even more. John Holdren, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley lamented, “…clean-burning, non-polluting hydrogen-using bulldozers still could knock down trees…” Laura Nader, also of Berkeley believes that “…many people just assume that cheaper, more abundant energy will mean that mankind is better off, but there is no evidence for that.”

Most people are concerned both about their economic and environmental future. The world is not perfect and there still are many problems to overcome, but fortunately the evidence suggest that human life and the environment are getting better. We need to constantly weigh the costs and benefits of environmental improvements. However, for the vocal minority in the environmental movement, environmentalism is a mere device to enforce a Luddite, anti-technology agenda on the rest of us.

Naturalized American citizens are often times more conspicuously patriotic than American-born citizens who are more likely to take their birthrights for granted. After all, a naturalized citizen makes a deliberate choice to declare allegiance to the United States. Those born here may or may not consciously assume a sincere allegiance or love of country. Perhaps, this tendency partially explains the actions of Zewdalem Kebede, on September 22, 2001.

Kebede is a senior majoring in political science at San Diego State University. He was born in Ethiopia and is a naturalized citizen. On the eventful Saturday, Kebede was studying in the Reserve Book Room of the Love Library. Within earshot, four Saudi Arabian students were conversing in Arabic keeping their conversation private from passersby. Kebede, however, speaks fluent Arabic.

According to Kebede, the students were rejoicing in the September 11 terrorist attacks and were only displeased that the White House was not also hit. Unable to contain his displeasure, he spoke to the Saudi students in Arabic and told them they should be ashamed of their attitude. Thousands of citizens of the country that was being so hospitable to them had been killed.

The details of the verbal exchange between the Kebede and the Saudi students remain unclear. Witnesses could not speak Arabic. No one reports any physical exchange or intimidation, though one of the Saudi students called the campus police. By the time, the police arrived what ever happened had been over for 30 minutes. Kebede and the students had gone their separate ways. Nonetheless, the Saudi students claimed harassment. Apparently, the university police cautioned both parties. Without any formal finding of wrongdoing, Kebede was warned by the president of the university about “abusive” conduct and was “admonished to conduct [himself] as a responsible member of the campus community in the future.”

In response to the incident, Kebede stated for the student paper:

“I’m naturalized American. I have taken an oath to protect this country, so that is my part to do — for that I am happy. I am an honest citizen for this country. I showed those guys that there are people who love America, who defend America. That’s what I showed. Is that a crime?”

Actually, the incident is illustrative of the Leftist assault on free expression on campus. Any serious campus ought to be an intellectual free-fire zone, under the presumption that in such a crucible truth emerges. People who are too emotionally or intellectually insecure to see or hear ideas that challenge their comfortable notions are not yet ready for college. If the ideas the Saudi students expressed could not bear scrutiny, then perhaps those ideas were deficient.

The Left on campus wants to suppress speech that makes minorities uncomfortable. As Peter Beinart of The New Republic explained that too often on campuses, “…[Sp]eech that offends minority students constitutes an implicit threat to their safety and therefore merits suppression. Threats to national security or rhetoric that offends those who suffered on September 11 do not.”

If you are really uncertain as to the nature of San Diego State’s official reaction, consider what would have happened in a similar incident if the people involved had been different. Assume that the four students who were talking privately were white students discussing their satisfaction that a black American had been dragged to his death in Texas and that their only regret is that more black Americans had not met a similar fate. Further assume that a black student overheard the ugly conversation and had the courage to confront the white students to tell them that they should be ashamed of themselves. Do you really believe that San Diego State University would have written a letter of admonition to that black student, and allowed the white students to walk away with no consequences and their identities unrevealed.

The courageous black student would have lauded for his actions and so should Kebede.

“Not to be a socialist at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.” [1] — French Premier Georges Clemenceau

Sometimes it appears that the Left and Progressives have erected such a high-walled idealized dream world that they are surprised and shocked when the real world unexpectedly intrudes. Minds protected by an ideological fortress rarely glimpse the real world. That is why the Left was surprised to find out from Khrushchev in 1956 that Stalin was at least as vicious a tyrant as any of the former czars of Russia. That is why they were surprised to learn that people would risk their lives at sea fleeing Vietnamese or Cuban Communism. That is why they were surprised when the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979. Certainly, that is why they were surprised when the Berlin Wall fell.

This gradual remedial education of the Left and introduction of the Left to the notion that Western capitalism or capitalism under the supervision of democratic institutions is not so bad is theme in the article “The Passion of Joschka Fischer” by Paul Berman. The New Republic piece uses the political life of Fischer, the German foreign minister, as a metaphor for two-decade long transition of the Left.

Berman is a self-identified Progressive and his treatment of Fischer is somewhat laudatory and apologetic. If you did not know Berman was a Progressive, one could tell as much by his language. No American Conservative would describe police as what “we Americans used to call `the pigs.”’ Nonetheless, Berman does manage to convey accurately the trauma and anxiety of the Left in confronting a Post-Cold War world.

In 1973, Fischer was barely more than a political street thug and now, as foreign minister, he is the highest-ranking government official who is also a Green Party member. In January 2001, Stern magazine published old photographs showing Joschka Fischer apparently assaulting a police officer. The publication caused a sensation in Germany and triggered Berman to consider the metamorphosis of the violent Left to the more responsible European political mainstream.

It seems long ago now, but the early 1970s was the era of kidnappings and murders by the Baader and Meinhof Red Army Fraction. The Cold War was not so cold and the European Left believed the real threat to peace and freedom was the United States. They believed that the United States was the political heir of the Nazis. The threat was Fascism, and to the German Left, fighting America and capitalism was fighting Fascism.

Reality intervened especially after the Left began to align itself with radical Palestinians. The Red Army Fraction facilitated radical Palestinians in their murder of Israeli athletes in Munich in 1972. In 1976, German and Palestinian terrorists hijacked an Air France airliner and forced it to fly to Entebbe Airport in dictator Idi Amin’s Uganda. Were it not for the timely intervention of Israeli commandos, Jewish passengers who had been singled out from the rest of the passengers, might have been executed. The violent Left in Germany began with the charter to oppose Nazism and Fascism and found themselves killing Jewish civilians. The sharpness of that irony helped cut even through the closed-minded certainty of the Left.

Although a youthful Joschka Fischer was willing to engage in some modest political violence, he seems to have been only peripherally associated with the more violent elements of the Left. A mature polished politician, he is now in the political mainstream, at least as the mainstream is defined in Germany.

To the surprise of the pacifist Green Party (pacifist, that is, only with respect to American military action), Fischer supported NATO’s intervention in Bosnia. Imagine the chagrin of the Green Party discovering that someone who is willing to strike a police officer is not really a “pacifist.” It is doubly ironic, that Fischer has now come full circle and has finally found a way to help fight Fascists after all. Except that he did it as an American rather than Russian ally.

This quotation was originally and incorrectly attributed to Winston Churchill.

The Reuters News Service instructs its correspondents to eschew the use of the word “terrorist.” Correspondents may quote others using the word, but they cannot exercise journalistic judgment and use the term directly. After all, according to Reuters, one man’s “terrorist” is another man’s “freedom fighter.” This is a new policy, since Reuters had no problem accurately characterizing Timothy McVeigh, the person who set off a bomb in a Federal building in Oklahoma Building killing many fellows citizens, as a “terrorist.”

In its defense, Reuters claims it is trying to avoid the use of “emotive” words and employ more descriptive ones. Well, this begs the question since the word terrorist is also descriptive. So what words are they substituting instead of “terrorist?” They are using words such as “bomber” or “hijacker” as if these words carried no emotional content. No, there is something more behind Reuters’s decision.

It would be easy to ridicule Reuters for its inability to identify a “terrorist.” Surely there may be cases where people might differ in their judgment, but it seems the deliberate act of slamming civilian aircraft into the World Trade Centers, killing thousands of civilians, is easy to identify as the act of “terrorists.”

A little cynicism may be in order here. Reuters is an international news service that seeks to expand its market. Calling a “terrorist” a “terrorist” may bother some Middle Eastern news consumers. Reuters is simply trading a little journalistic integrity for market share. This is not an unheard of exchange. Greed may not be noble, but it is, at least, understandable.

The Religious Newswriters Association and the Society of Professional Journalists have no similar excuse when they advise journalists to “[a]void using word combinations such as `Islamic terrorist’ or `Muslim extremist”’ lest someone believe that all Muslims are terrorists or extremists. Surely this is political correctness gone awry.

It is certainly the case that mainstream Islamic teaching is fundamentally inconsistent with mass murder. Nonetheless there are strains of Islamic fundamentalism that endorse and use terrorism. These strains are sufficiently prevalent that they pose political threats to Islamic countries like Egypt and Pakistan. Indeed, the clerical leaders of one such strain, the Taliban, rule Afghanistan with a religiously gloved iron fist.

It is not insensitive journalists who have attached the modifier “Islamic” to “terrorism.” It is groups like “Islamic Jihad” and the Taliban who have seized the traditions and history of Islam for their purposes. The US is not at war with Islam, but there are certainly Islamic groups who are at war with the US.

The term “Islamic terrorist” is accurately descriptive and informative no matter how uncomfortable that makes some feel. Such a term no more implies that all Muslims are terrorists than the phrase “American steelworkers” implies that all Americans are steelworkers. If it were not for the traditional Islamic respect for learning, perhaps we in the West would not have had the benefit of Aristotelian logic to understand this simple point.

The source of the recent anthrax attacks in the US is still not clear. The Washington Post has reported that “right-wing hate groups” are suspected sources. Does that phrase imply that all right-wingers are haters? Of course not.

This mania for political correctness, to avoid offending Muslims even when there is no real offense, potentially corrupts journalism. Journalists often call the subjects of stories to provide them an opportunity to correct inaccuracies or to respond to comments by others. However, they would never allow any outside groups to be involved in the editorial process. The Society of Professional Journalists would rightly never suggest that the military should “review…coverage and make suggestions.” Yet, this is precisely the oversight function that the Society of Professional Journalists believes “targeted” groups should have.

In an effort to appear objective and impartial, journalists are being asked to contort their normal processes for seeking the truth. Sometimes, speaking and writing the truth forces one to be on one side. Live with it. As Winston Churchill said, “I cannot undertake to be impartial as between the fire brigade and the fire.”

References

• Hayes, Stephen, “Accuracy in Media,” Weekly Standard, October 26, 2001.
• Guidelines for Countering Racial, Ethnic and Religious Profiling, Society for Professional Journalists, 2001.

The inauguration of John Adams took place the city of Philadelphia in the House Chamber of the Congress on March 4, 1797. As David McCullough in his book John Adams, paints the scene, “There was a burst of applause when George Washington entered the room…More applause followed the appearance of Thomas Jefferson…[A]nd `like marks of approbation’ greeted John Adams, who on his entrance in the wake of the two tall Virginians seems shorter and more bulky even the usual.”These three men, Washington, Jefferson, and Adams, are the preeminent American Founding Fathers. The occasion of the inauguration of Johns Adams was last time that all three appeared on the same platform. Many people attending the inauguration suspected as much.

The reputations and popularity of different American heroes ebb and flow as the times seem to demand the different qualities associated with different Founding Fathers. Perhaps the reputation of George Washington alone has remained stable over time.

For a country that was largely prosperous and self-involved over the last two decades, Thomas Jefferson seemed a likely icon. The brilliant and articulate Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, was the most rhetorically gifted of the three and could be idolized in an age of glibness. In an era devoted to self-improvement and “self actualization,” the expansive curiosity and intellectual depth of Jefferson was a perfect fit.

Jefferson’s recent popular decline and Adams’s ascendancy began with John Ferling’s book, Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, and Jefferson and the American Revolution. George Washington is portrayed in Ferling’s book as heroic if sometimes bumbling and stiff. His popular stock remains stable. Jefferson’s brilliance is painted in contrast to his glaring failings: his irresponsible extravagance, his affair with a slave in his custody, and his refusal to free his slaves upon his death. Jefferson’s stock falls into a recession. Adams plodding constancy, particularly in foreign affairs, as well as his simple honesty supported a more bullish assessment.

Nonetheless, of the big three, Washington, Adams and Jefferson, John Adams is perhaps the least known and least understood, that is, until David McCullough’s new book. John Adams has been on national bestseller’s list for months. Despite the book’s over 700 pages, McCullough’s adroit prose and command of illuminating detail make the book a joyful read.

What is perhaps least known about Adams is his success in foreign affairs. During the Revolutionary War, Adams endured a dangerous ocean voyage beset with threats by the British and a torturous overland journey to represent US interests in France. While there, Adams worked first to gain support from the French in the War of Independence. After the French entered the war on the side of the Americans, he toiled to keep the French from negotiating a separate peace with Britain at the expense of American interests.

Unlike Jefferson’s, Adams’s personal life is a model worthy of emulation. He was a devoted father who lived simply and focused on the education his children. Adams’s relationship with his wife, Abagail, is legendary. Although Adams’s work for the United States and the slow transportation of the time sentenced the couple to months and even years of physical separation, their voluminous correspondence revealed an intellectual, emotional, and physical intimacy that anyone would envy.

Whereas Jefferson’s profligacy in book purchases was just one extravagance of many, Adams built an enormous library. When Jefferson died his estate was so worthless he could not free his slaves without burdening heirs with debt. Through frugality, wise management, and without the aid of slave labor, Adams left a substantial estate to his family.

McCullough’s book demonstrates that Adams’s simple virtues strike an important resonance with contemporary Americans. Unfortunately, the recent attack on America has probably jolted the country into a different mind set. We will now look for leaders and models with martial rather than diplomatic virtues. Adams’s popular ascendancy may be short-lived replaced by America’s first war hero, George Washington. Perhaps the public will even reach beyond the generation of the Founding Fathers, to Abraham Lincoln who led the country through its darkest times.

“You have heard that it was said, `An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” — Matthew, 5:38-39.

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” — Matthew, 10:34.

“Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: `It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord. On the contrary: `If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” — Romans 12:19-21.

“For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.” — Romans 13:3-4.

“Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.” — Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

“A pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer.” — Theodore Roosevelt, 1917.

It sounds like an oxymoron, but there exists an intellectually honest, devout, resolute, and muscular pacifism that springs both from Christian beliefs and other religious traditions. It is a belief that physical violence is inherently against God’s will. It is a creed that holds evil can only be effectively countered with nonviolent resistance. It is a conviction that violence, even if temporarily effective, is, in the long run, counterproductive. The Mennonites, Quakers, and the followers of Gandhi fall into this tradition of pacifism.

But make no mistake about the courage of the adherents to this position. They believe that nonviolent resistance could very well lead to persecution and death. These people are clear-eyed about the consequences of their faith. They recognize the reality of evil and the cruelty that evil people can inflict on them, their families, and their nations. Their faith may call them to martyrdom. According to Luke 10:3, the Lord commands, “Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.” There are many pacifists who have tried to build a peaceful world by bringing medical care, clean water, and food for those who lack these necessities. These pacifists have often risked personal safety in doing so.

There is an equally devout and honest tradition that believes that violence and war are sometimes regrettably necessary and can lead to peace. The Catholic tradition, in particular in the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine, has a well-considered and developed “Just War Theory.” A just war must meet at least four criteria:

1. War must be a last resort. Other avenues to mediate a dispute must be exhausted.
2. Only a legitimate authority can conduct a just war.
3. War must be undertaken for the right reasons. In the words of Saint Augustine, “… we go to war that we may have peace.”
4. The war must entail a reasonable chance of success. The destruction accompanying war should not be inflicted for a hopeless cause. On balance, the expected good from a war must exceed the cost in violence.

In the middle, between deep pacifism and the reluctant acceptance of war as a necessity, there is a squishy and soft pacifism, the pacifism of Phil Donohue and much of the left. This pacifism avoids violence not through courageous nonviolent resistance, but by dismissing the need for any action. Whereas true pacifism recognizes the existence of evil and even the necessity of martyrdom in nonviolent resistance, squishy pacifism will find ways to explain or excuse evil. Squishy pacifism will employ self-hate disguised as reflection to diffuse moral clarity. They will ask, Sure the people who drove planes into the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon did a bad thing, but what has the US done to make them so mad? If moral clarity can be sufficiently muddied, the moral authority to conduct military action atrophies. By blurring distinctions between good and evil and feigning an open-mindedness that hides an uncalibrated moral barometer, squishy pacifism allows evil to continue unabated. Squishy pacifism confronts evil with neither nonviolent nor violent resistance.

America is open to and prospers by exposure to different ideas. Muscular pacifists and believers in the possibility of a just war have much to seriously debate. Squishy pacifism just make clear the adage that one price of freedom is the necessity to tolerate fools.

References:

• Writings on Christian Nonresistance and Pacifism from Anabaptist-Mennonite Sources.
• Bottum, J., “AWOL Christian Soldiers?,” Weekly Standard, October 1, 2001.

“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.” — W. Somerset Maugham, Strictly Personal.

When people speak of searching for the “root causes” of Islamic terrorism, one can be certain that those causes are really the last things in which these people are interested. Some who seek such causes are so unfamiliar with abject evil that they fruitlessly search for rational explanations, where no such conventional rationality applies. Some habitually, in the words of Jeanne Kirkpatrick, “Blame America First.” As people immerse themselves in the soft rhetoric of understanding and sympathy, they can avoid looking squarely at hard unpleasant realities. They can simply fret about misunderstandings, while congratulating themselves on their moral sensitivity.

There is little secular rational reasoning for the anger of Islamic militants against the United States and the West. It has been over 50 years since countries like Britain and France have dominated areas of the Middle East. If Western values and customs have leaked into Islamic countries, it is because their own people have embraced them. It is strict Islamic theocracies that find it necessary to enforce religious restraints on freedom, particular its women.

Charles Krauthammer has recently pointed out that over the last decade the US has been involved in three wars, in the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, and Kosovo. In all these cases, American military power protected Muslims, sometimes against other Muslims. Before that, Americans helped the Afghani people resist Soviet domination. Rationality would suggest that gratitude from Islamic peoples is in order.

An alternative perennial complaint is that the root of the hatred of America in the Islamic world is American support of Israel. The fact that Israel is the only democracy in the area with a similar respect for individual liberties makes the US and Israel natural allies. Nonetheless, despite repeated acts of terrorism against Israel by radical Palestinians and other groups, the United States spent much of the 1990s pushing, pulling, and pressuring Israelis in a futile effort to swap “land for peace.” The Palestinian response to a dramatic Israeli peace overture last year, that even offered partial control of Jerusalem to the Palestinians, was a flat refusal to negotiate.

The truth is that only the Palestinians are strongly motivated by anti-Israeli fervor. While other Islamic countries vocally oppose Israel, for most Islamic countries anti-Israeli rhetoric is a convenient distraction to internal policy failures. Islamic aversion to Israel is born more of a reflexive support of Palestinian brethren than any strong geopolitical concern. Support of Israel is not a root cause the hatred of Americans. Even if it were, to abandon a democracy to theocratic tyrannies would be a repudiation of our own values.

The final argument by those in search of root causes is that terrorism is born of the wealth disparity caused by the West. While there is room for development in many poor Islamic countries, many others have become wealthy by selling oil. Bin Laden is a child of privilege and his agents who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were middle class and educated. Whatever the source of their discontent, it is not economic.

The real root cause of radical Islamic terrorism is its objection to history. Mainstream Islam is fully consistent with modern values of individualism, democracy, and tolerance. Islamic-Americans are both true to their faith and prosperous. However, there is a fundamentalist strain of Islam that has not accommodated itself to the twentieth century. Its adherents look back at centuries of cultural and military dominance of much of the world by Islamic culture and have not reconciled themselves to a world where modern Western values have created enormous wealth. Islam may be consistent with modernity, but modern wealth and affluence did not arise out of Islamic culture and a certain, broad-based resentment lingers. Leaders like Bin Laden and the late Ayatollah Khomeini exploit this resentment to impose their own form of religious tyranny with its rejection of both tolerance and respect for individual conscience. The real root causes of radical Islamic terrorism and the hatred of the United States by some are our values. We cannot eliminate these root causes without jettisoning our own values.

Unfortunately, the Islamic holy-warrior ethos, misdirected and used by the likes of Bin Laden and his agents for nefarious purposes, is usually stopped only by overwhelming military defeat. Reuel Marc Gerecht, in the Weekly Standard, explained how in 1898 the British defeated the Mahdist regime in Sudan with modern machine guns and artillery. The Ottomans crushed the “ultra-radical Iranian Shah Ismail at the battle of Chaldiran with musketry and sword” in 1514. According to Gerecht, “demonstrating with frightful clarity the indefatigability of the triumphant power” cracks the resolve of even the most committed warriors.

It is unlikely that reason and persuasion will prevail. Regular terrorist attacks on the West and on moderate Islamic countries will likely abate only with the forceful destruction of terrorists and their infrastructure. Very likely, American service people will die in the service of a culture, value system, and a country that allows people to squander their time looking for root causes. If ever there is confusion as to which side in this conflict represents evil and darkness, remember who deliberately killed innocents by slamming civilian airliners into buildings. If ever there is uncertainty as to who represents goodness and light, remember who fights for the freedom to ponder, publish, and argue about the root causes of conflict.