So this is where the “war on terror” has got us. Look through your morning paper: Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Mumbai. It’s “crisis overload,” squeal the overstimulated TV anchors. How did it happen?

I’d say it’s a result of treating 9/11 as a supreme menace on its own, rather than largely determined by other factors. I guess that places me among the “root-causes people,” a term implying lack of toughness, like vegan or pacifist. For the record, I believe in treating symptoms, not just causes. But treating a symptom while ignoring its cause is benighted. And pouring resources into treating a symptom while exacerbating its cause(s) — that is lunatic.

Take a recent example. Among the resources poured into the war on terror since 9/11 — along with billions for war making, surveillance, security devices, terror experts — has been a campaign against terrorist financing: to track down and cut off their money.

A week ago, Canada announced it would do its part by becoming headquarters for a global, anti-money-laundering group. Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day proclaimed, “When we choke off the lifeline of the financing and the support of terrorism, we choke off terrorism itself.”

Perhaps he was projecting. Maybe because he sees money as the lifeline of everything, he thinks everyone does. But falser words were never spoken. The cost of the first attack on the World Trade Centre, in 1993, which did $500-million worth of damage, was $400. The 9/11 bombers lived in cheap motels and put their plane tickets on credit cards. They never did pay for them.

It is a myth that terrorists have vast sums that they shunt around the world. (I base much of this on McGill economist Tom Naylor’s new book: Satanic Purses: Money, Myth and Misinformation in the War on Terror.)

Alongside last week’s announcement, the press informed us that Canada’s finance tracking agency, Fintrac, last year detected “hundreds of millions in suspect banking.” I italicize this because these reports are always full of weasel words.

Fintrac, for instance, reported $180-million in “suspected terrorist financing” the year before. Its director “believed the figure for 2006” would be even higher. It is “investigating schemes involving the Tamil Tigers and Iraqi insurgents.” “Terrorism-linked financing” is also a favourite. People are linked (or involved, or related) if they had contact with someone who had contact with someone else, some time, who may have been in a “suspected” group. If I sound hard to please, I’ll just note that Fintrac passes its nuggets on to CSIS and the RCMP, but “no charges have resulted.”

I’m hyperventilating because the obsessive focus on terror isn’t just a waste of money or a form of dishonesty. It also increases the incidence of terror. Here’s an example. Palestinian voters hold an election in which they choose a party representing Hamas, a Muslim group originally nurtured by Israel, which does a lot of charitable works, in a society that desperately needs them, and which also has a militia that engages in terror acts. Canada’s government cancels all aid to the Palestinian Authority in response.

This doesn’t choke off terror, it chokes off hope in any route except terror. The voters learn that Canada, once viewed as an honest broker, will not accept their choice (of a government, not a militia). Families fall further into destitution.

When militants capture an Israeli soldier, people cheer, because someone has done something to give voice to their unheeded cries. “Ultimately, the principal asset of those carrying out terrorist acts is not money but commitment,” writes Tom Naylor. Those who do not self-destruct or despair, grow more committed to resist and revenge — since they seem the only alternatives left.

The ghastly acts of terror (like 9/11) are, sad to say, only a pimple on the vast body of international violence and inequality. But terror serves to distract us from those other, ongoing calamities, which will then engender, periodically, new outbursts of terror, until they — the underlying outrages — are finally dealt with. Or so it appears to me. Peruse your paper and see what you think.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.