The Accidental Terrorist
Tuesday, February 26, 2002
Poor readers can listen to this piece through WBEZ.
We have a long history of financially supporting terrorist organizations in my family. My father once gave his lunch money to the Black Panthers, even though my Dad is both a white person and a pacifist. He explains it away now by saying that the late 1960s were crazy times, and every radical cause looked pretty good from a distance. In the late 1990s, my little brother, who inherited my father's fondness for hopelessly radical political causes, offered indirect financial support on a couple occasions to the Earth Liberation Front, a loosely knit eco-terrorist organization.
So I cannot say that I was entirely surprised when President Bush froze the assets of the Global Relief Foundation, based in Bridgeview. Just my luck that the only time I engaged in charitable giving last year, I was allegedly buying bombs for al-Qaeda. Try writing that off on your taxes.
I am unconvinced, incidentally, that the Global Relief Foundation aided terrorism, but I will allow that the government might know more about it than me. At the time, I believed what they said, that they seek to provide housing and food to impoverished Muslims throughout the world. As a guy who makes a large part of his living writing reviews of books about the Islamic world, it only seemed fair that I send some of my salary back to the world's poorest Muslims. And as terrorism outfits go, the name Global Relief Foundation is not particularly suspicious. Nonetheless, it remains very possible that I am an accidental sponsor of terrorism. But I'd also like to mention that according to an ongoing series of advertisements sponsored by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, all Americans who buy illegal drugs support terrorist activities as well, so at least I am not alone.
Suffice it to say that when President Bush named the Global Relief Foundation a terrorist organization, I was horrified. I don't know, of course, whether they actually helped al-Qaeda. But if they did, my money helped them, and in some small way, I may be responsible for the September 11 attack, which is about the worst feeling I've ever had. President Bush has promised that the United States will not distinguish between the terrorists and regimes that aid terrorism. This was our logic for destroying the Taliban, and it MAY soon enough be our logic for invading Iraq. But I wonder whether the President is willing to distinguish between the terrorists and the individuals who aid them. If not, I'm really no better than John Walker Lindh or Mullah Omar. The fact is that the Taliban did not seem to know that bin Laden would attack America in such a spectacularly horrific way any more than I did, but they suffered the wrath of a furious and crippling American military campaign nonetheless. Of course, if you don't count the financing of terrorism, I'm a productive and awkwardly handsome American citizen, and Mullah Omar is a one-eyed murderer who jailed men for failing to grow their beards long enough, but still. If you are either with the terrorists or with us, I'm afraid I might have accidentally cast my lot with the terrorists.
This got me to thinking about the other morally questionable causes and individuals I've supported over the years. Until a couple weeks ago, I smoked cigarettes, which helped to pay for the election campaigns of my least favorite senator, Jesse Helms. Now I chew Nicotine gum instead, which puts money in the grubby hands of GlaxoSmithKline, a company that for years fought against the sale of affordable AIDS drugs in Africa. So according to the aiding-terrorism-is-as-bad-as-committing-terrorism logic, I am a homophobic terrorist opposed to treating African people with AIDS. For the record, I also sometimes buy bagels at Starbucks, even though all young liberal people like myself know that Starbucks is evil, although none of us seems to know exactly why.
But of course there is a difference between people who chew Nicorette and people who kill babies, which is part of the reason the government won't be coming after me. Also, my name is John Green, which does not sound like a terrorist name. The Department of Justice can't be bothered with small-time American terrorists like myself, except for those with Arabic names, who have been jailed by the hundreds on trumped up immigration violations. I'm sure some of those people are guilty of awful crimes, but I'm equally sure that some of them are less guilty than me. And as long as we make distinctions between the young white kids who accidentally further the cause of terrorism and the Arab men who do the same, America need not wonder why so many people in the Arab world hate our government.
We have a long history of financially supporting terrorist organizations in my family. My father once gave his lunch money to the Black Panthers, even though my Dad is both a white person and a pacifist. He explains it away now by saying that the late 1960s were crazy times, and every radical cause looked pretty good from a distance. In the late 1990s, my little brother, who inherited my father's fondness for hopelessly radical political causes, offered indirect financial support on a couple occasions to the Earth Liberation Front, a loosely knit eco-terrorist organization.
So I cannot say that I was entirely surprised when President Bush froze the assets of the Global Relief Foundation, based in Bridgeview. Just my luck that the only time I engaged in charitable giving last year, I was allegedly buying bombs for al-Qaeda. Try writing that off on your taxes.
I am unconvinced, incidentally, that the Global Relief Foundation aided terrorism, but I will allow that the government might know more about it than me. At the time, I believed what they said, that they seek to provide housing and food to impoverished Muslims throughout the world. As a guy who makes a large part of his living writing reviews of books about the Islamic world, it only seemed fair that I send some of my salary back to the world's poorest Muslims. And as terrorism outfits go, the name Global Relief Foundation is not particularly suspicious. Nonetheless, it remains very possible that I am an accidental sponsor of terrorism. But I'd also like to mention that according to an ongoing series of advertisements sponsored by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, all Americans who buy illegal drugs support terrorist activities as well, so at least I am not alone.
Suffice it to say that when President Bush named the Global Relief Foundation a terrorist organization, I was horrified. I don't know, of course, whether they actually helped al-Qaeda. But if they did, my money helped them, and in some small way, I may be responsible for the September 11 attack, which is about the worst feeling I've ever had. President Bush has promised that the United States will not distinguish between the terrorists and regimes that aid terrorism. This was our logic for destroying the Taliban, and it MAY soon enough be our logic for invading Iraq. But I wonder whether the President is willing to distinguish between the terrorists and the individuals who aid them. If not, I'm really no better than John Walker Lindh or Mullah Omar. The fact is that the Taliban did not seem to know that bin Laden would attack America in such a spectacularly horrific way any more than I did, but they suffered the wrath of a furious and crippling American military campaign nonetheless. Of course, if you don't count the financing of terrorism, I'm a productive and awkwardly handsome American citizen, and Mullah Omar is a one-eyed murderer who jailed men for failing to grow their beards long enough, but still. If you are either with the terrorists or with us, I'm afraid I might have accidentally cast my lot with the terrorists.
This got me to thinking about the other morally questionable causes and individuals I've supported over the years. Until a couple weeks ago, I smoked cigarettes, which helped to pay for the election campaigns of my least favorite senator, Jesse Helms. Now I chew Nicotine gum instead, which puts money in the grubby hands of GlaxoSmithKline, a company that for years fought against the sale of affordable AIDS drugs in Africa. So according to the aiding-terrorism-is-as-bad-as-committing-terrorism logic, I am a homophobic terrorist opposed to treating African people with AIDS. For the record, I also sometimes buy bagels at Starbucks, even though all young liberal people like myself know that Starbucks is evil, although none of us seems to know exactly why.
But of course there is a difference between people who chew Nicorette and people who kill babies, which is part of the reason the government won't be coming after me. Also, my name is John Green, which does not sound like a terrorist name. The Department of Justice can't be bothered with small-time American terrorists like myself, except for those with Arabic names, who have been jailed by the hundreds on trumped up immigration violations. I'm sure some of those people are guilty of awful crimes, but I'm equally sure that some of them are less guilty than me. And as long as we make distinctions between the young white kids who accidentally further the cause of terrorism and the Arab men who do the same, America need not wonder why so many people in the Arab world hate our government.
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