The Aftershock of Bali by Gene Callahan

It seems that there is no tragedy, however horrific, that isn't quickly exploited in the service of some political agenda. As if to add insult to injury, after nearly two hundred people were killed in a horrible bombing in Bali, we are now being assaulted with a blast of stupid commentary, a kind of ideological aftershock.

I listened to CBS News Radio on the way to work this morning. Colin Powell was saying that the US warned Indonesia that it had credible and specific information about upcoming terrorist attacks in the country. In fact, the US took its information so seriously that it closed its embassy in Jakarta on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

I see. The information was so specific that the US thought that an attack that actually took place October 12 at a nightclub in Bali would instead take place September 11 at an embassy in Jakarta. Could we have been any more accurate than that?

John McCain opined, "Maybe now Indonesia will cooperate in the war on terror." (I quote from memory.)

But before the September 11th attacks, the US had apparently received warnings from Britain, Russia, and Israel. What would McCain's reaction be to hearing Putin tell us, "Maybe now, the US will cooperate in the war on terror"? Especially if that meant whatever Putin decided it meant, such as nuking Chechnya if necessary?

US citizens have now been told to avoid Indonesia. But given that 180 people were killed in Indonesia in the attack, while 3000 died in the US, wouldn't it be better to avoid America? If al Qaeda really has the global reach that is claimed for it (and perhaps it does – I certainly don't pretend to know), then it would seem Mars or Venus are the only safe places to go. Or perhaps Antartica, as I haven't heard of al Qaeda operating there.

The War Party was good for several mindless commentaries. Take, for instance, Deroy Murdock writing in NRO:

Were there many people who were ambivalent about al-Qaeda before the Bali attack? (And no, I don't mean in Saudi Arabia or Tunisia – that's not the audience Murdock is addressing.) Were there people who were saying "They're just a bunch of misunderstood fellows?" Maybe somebody somewhere, but no serious commentators I've seen in any Western outlet have been "ambivalent" about al-Qaeda. They are murderous terrorists. Even Noam Chomsky agrees with that point.

Well, it's clear that terrorists attack civilians. That is, after all, what makes them terrorists, isn't it? But that says nothing at all about their motivation in attacking those civilians at that place. To go on to conclude, as Murdock does, that the attack occurred because tourists "dancing away [to] some cheesy pop song," was "[too] much levity" for the terrorists is to be willfully ignorant. The terrorists did not attack just any people having fun anywhere. They attacked a place they knew was frequented by many Australian tourists. If, indeed, it was al-Qaeda that staged the attack, then surely Australians were targeted because of their aid to the US in attacking Afghanistan. To say what should not need repeating, but apparently does, the deliberate killing of non-combatants in war is despicable and evil. But recognizing it as such needn't prevent us from trying to understand why those non-combatants in that place were targeted, nor need it force us to such a stupid conclusion as "because they were having too much fun."

As bad as Murdock's piece was, Chris Weinkopf at FrontPage proves that Murdock could have gone further. You see, Weinkopf says, "[w]hether it's al Qaeda or some other branch of the Islamofascist enterprise that bears direct responsibility for this particular attack is largely of academic interest." That's because "The war will not be over – it should not be over – until every terrorist-sponsoring state is toppled or reformed, and the terrorist operations that feed off them are left without shelter or sustenance." As it turns out, we aren't actually after particular individuals who have committed particular crimes at all: we are at war with an ideology, "Islamofascism."

Well, when a murder is committed, I suppose we could say that it's of academic interest exactly who committed the murder, and whether he is a known murderer or one we haven't seen before. After all, we can't end the war on crime until every murderer is left without "shelter or sustenance," can we? Just get them all, and let's not worry about who killed whom.

But, given a world in which we have finite resources to pursue murderers, and in which we would like to avoid arresting everyone just to make sure we have gotten all the killers, doesn't Weinkopf think it might be a wee bit helpful to try to get a grasp on who committed the latest murder, who the worst murderers are, and so on?

Weinkopf continues, "[The failure to grasp that we are at war with an ideology] repeats itself every time a self-styled 'peace activist' or spokesman for the 'international community' demands 'proof' of an Iraqi connection to al Qaeda to justify the overthrow of Saddam Hussein."

Hey, I thought it was only post-modernist English professors who put "proof" in scare quotes. In any case, the above makes clear the real point of Weinkopf's column: You see, if you're against attacking Iraq, well, then, you're in favor of disco dancers being blown up in Bali. And that's because, even if Iraq has no ties with al-Qaeda, and even if we can't connect it to any other acts of terrorism in the last decade or more, and even if the Baathist ideology of Saddam Hussein is diametrically opposed to the radical Islamic ideology that Weinkopf contends is the true enemy, well... well...

But, look, I've gone and gotten myself all knotted up with just the sort of academic concerns like "proof" and "guilt" that limp-wristed "peace activists" and wussies from the "international community" waste their time on. We've got to attack Iraq because we're against nightclub patrons being blown up, OK? So, are you with us or against us?

October 17, 2002

Gene Callahan [send him mail], the author of Economics for Real People, is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and a contributing columnist to LewRockwell.com.