Word: roote
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...second consequence emerges from a peculiar property of root causes: on close examination they turn out to be, as a matter of practice or policy, insoluble. There is no conceivable American policy that will solve the problem of poverty in Central America. (Not that poverty can never be ameliorated. It can. But not by a simple act of political will. In the West, for example, the conquest of mass poverty was the product of two centuries of painful industrialization.) The term root tends to be assigned to the most intractable of conditions. Except in the mind of the revolutionary, that...
Thus the danger of the root cause idea. It is offered as an analytic tool to understand an unpleasant reality: revolutionary violence. But whether intended or not, the logic of the root cause argument suggests one of two attitudes toward the unpleasantness: 1) despair, because root causes cannot be changed, or 2) moral ambivalence, because legitimacy necessarily accrues to those who fight with root cause on their side. One must not find oneself "on the wrong side of history...
That does not mean that revolutionary violence can never be justified. It is hard to argue, for example, that South African blacks may not take up arms for their freedom. It means only that an appeal to root causes is not automatic justification. The Philippine Islands are replete with root causes as deep and difficult as any others in the world. Appeal to these causes, however, is not enough to justify either the ends (Communist) or the means (brutal and terroristic) of the New People's Army...
Today that argument is hardly heard anymore in the Central American context. Something happened. The Salvadoran guerrillas are in retreat, and yet, mirabile dictu, root causes remain. The tides have changed, while poverty and misery endure. As for Nicaragua, those most habituated to the use of the root cause argument are contra opponents. They are hardly likely to invoke it to explain -- i.e., legitimize -- the contra cause...
...place where the root cause idea does survive is the Middle East. The issue is terrorism, and the argument is familiar: Isn't the best way to fight terror to go after the root causes? Counterterrorism, embargoes, threats and, finally, air raids treat only symptoms. Band-Aids on a wound. (The metaphors mix.) Why not attack the root causes? In the context of the Middle East, that means "solving the Palestinian problem." Accommodation between Israel and the Palestinians. The way out of the nightmare. Jews and Arabs living together in historic Palestine. An end to war. Peace as the cure...