The main response to Sept. 11 among Western conservatives and rightwingers has been a flinty resolve to eliminate "terrorists" worldwide, root and branch. But progressives also argue that eliminating poverty will solve the problem. Give them more bread, it is implied, and their anti-Western angst will disappear.
Japan, predictably, tries to go in both directions, gladly joining the U.S. "war on terrorism" while actively seeking a leading role in Afghanistan reconstruction.
But so-called terrorism never had much to do with poverty. If people in the Third World want to use force against their governments or the West, that is because of perceived injustice.
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