The L ittle D rum m er G irl and
John le Carre:
The Search for Terrorism’s Root Causes
In the immediate aftermath of terrorist attacks upon the United States on Sep
tember 11, 2001, the American public rallied around President George W. Bush,
lending support to his unequivocal pronouncement, “You are either with us or the
terrorists.” Efforts to explain the root causes for terrorism and animosity regarding
the United States were largely unexplored by the nation’s media. CBS television
news anchor Dan Rather, abandoning any pretext of journalistic independence,
announced his willingness to follow his commander-in-chief and go anywhere his
presence was ordered. As the United States prepared for a military response to
Osama Bin Laden and his A1 Qaeda network, whom President Bush and the intel
ligence community held responsible for the terrorist assaults, few voices were raised
in protest. And those who did challenge a unilateral response were ignored by the
media.
One notable critic of American foreign policy is the novelist and former Brit
ish intelligence operative John le Carre, who in a 19 November piece for The Na
tion, describes the war on terrorism as a conflict which the Americans and their
British allies cannot win. Le Carre acknowledges that the United States has but
little choice to go after Bin Laden and his terrorist network; however, he fears that
this military exercise will make Bin Laden a martyr and increase terrorism’s ranks.
Le Carre writes that Americans will accumulate more enemies as they react mili
tarily to terrorism, “. . . because after all the bribes, threats and promises that have
patched together the rickety coalition, we cannot prevent another suicide bomber
being bom each time a misdirected missile wipes out an innocent village, and
nobody can tell us how to dodge this devil’s cycle of despair, hatred and—yet
again—revenge.” The British author also expresses concern that the American re
joinder t