I was never a huge Justin Trudeau supporter, nor am I at the present time. With that said, I have developed a grudging respect for him stemming from the comments he made following the Boston Marathon bombing.
Up until now, I rarely gave Trudeau much thought. My sentiments, admittedly far from objective, were based on an assumption that Trudeau’s popularity was due solely to residual Trudeaumania. In other words, I felt that Justin Trudeau’s rise to political stardom was resultant of riding on his father’s coattails rather than any real ability to lead the nation. I mistook him for a fluff candidate, not really capable of pulling it off.
In the aftermath of the Marathon bombing, Trudeau made the following statement.
“Over the coming days, we have to look at the root causes. Now, we don’t know now if it was terrorism or a single crazy or a domestic issue or a foreign issue, but there is no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded. Completely at war with innocents. At war with a society. And our approach has to be, where do those tensions come from?
Yes, there’s a need for security and response, but we also need to make sure that as we go forward, that we don’t emphasize a culture of fear and mistrust. Because that ends up marginalizing even further those who already are feeling like they are enemies of society.”
As expected, Mr. Trudeau was thoroughly castigated by wannabe warmonger, resident King of Sussex Drive, Lord of the Manor, PM Stephen Harper. Mr. Harper stated in response to Trudeau, “when you see this kind of action, when you see this kind of violent act, you do not sit around trying to rationalize it or make excuses for it or figure out its root causes”.
Surprisingly, I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Trudeau’s brutally honest statement. If the United States government spent a little more time on retrospection and a little less time on threatening or actually waging war upon other nations, they would have fewer enemies, hence would face less threats to national security. If those elected to office would begin representing the interests of the people, rather than the veracious appetite of the industrial military complex, the world, in fact, would be a safer place.
As demonstrated by the Boston Marathon bombing, the United States’ war on terror certainly doesn’t keep the nation any safer. The overtly broad characterization of radical Islamization as the fundamental agent of terrorism is desultory and the security of the nation will continue to be at risk. Trudeau voiced the one question demanding an answer. What underlying festering wound causes human beings to distort a religion in order to invoke terror upon a civilian population?” The United States very well understands the composition of this specific catalyst that once unleashed triggers a domino effect setting in motion a terrorist plot. Acknowledging what fuels terrorism and anti-American sentiment, would force the United States to acknowledge its’ own culpability, an unacceptable proposition to Eisenhower’s greatest fear, the industrial military complex.
Failure to honestly assess what drives terrorism and lay it at the doorstep of radical Islamization is as about as effective as treating a severed aortic artery with a Band-Aid. It would be prudent to actually address the elephant in the room, rather than assigning the all too convenient label, radical Islamization. From the standpoint of those elected, reflection and self-awareness fails to serve their own self-interest. Perpetual war will not survive anything beyond a cursory, superficial glance at the underlying etiology of terrorist threats that nation faces.
Since 9/11, the effort spent on retrospection pales in comparison to the costly effort expended upon aggression. Attributing the root cause to radical Islamization is superficial and ineffectual. Rather than curbing threats to the nation, is has an inverse effect on the intended result. Assigning primary causation of terrorism to a religion practiced predominantly by 1.2 billion peaceful people only polarizes us and further marginalizes the already marginalized. Adding the qualifying modifier “radical” to the religion of Islam doesn’t alter the inference of Islam as the underlying element to terrorism and it certainly doesn’t make friends. One only has to look at the immediate aftermath where thousands of Muslims were rounded up and detained without due process to understand this. State sanctioned terrorism as witnessed in North Pakistan via drone strokes, along with the actions of governmental agencies in post 9/11, paralleled with increased Islamophobia evidenced on the Internet, news media, lobby groups, websites and bloggers fails to delineate the word Islam from the words “radical” Islam. Any human being victim to injustice, hypocrisy, and violence by a government that claims to lead with these very principles (and tends to hold the bar much, much higher for others than they do for themselves), yet is guilty of violating these same said of the principles can easily be manipulated towards the very thing we rail against. It begs to question what transforms the non violent into human beings willing to murder innocent civilians? Is the radicalization of these people metastasized by those who recruit members via the bastardization of a religion giving moral cause to resultant violence as part of a political agenda or are the war mongering actions of the United States government perpetuated upon other human beings responsible?