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certain kind of leftist just can’t help blaming American imperialism for September 11. In the search for “root causes,” their instinct to designate the United States as villain overwhelms their spirit of critical inquiry. Overlooking the perpetrators’ frank expressions of a thoroughly medieval worldview, they quickly conclude that terrorism must result from poverty and oppression. While none defend the terrorist acts of September 11, once they speak ritual words of condemnation, they move the discussion to the need to understand a somewhat overzealous response to American-sponsored injustice.
There’s an odd congruence here with the views of the big-business right. Advocates of the corporate trade agenda quickly seized on the attacks to justify everything from fast-track trade negotiations to making entrepreneurs in China pay royalties on T-shirt logos. Poverty breeds terrorism, the reasoning goes, and free trade is the solution to world poverty. The free traders’ cure f...
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