The causal explanation chosen for terrorism dictates which solutions become politically viable

Evidence

The solution to terrorism, if understood as resulting from Muslim fundamentalism, is elimination of the terrorist through militarism, incarceration, and war, which has been the primary approach during the War on Terror. Advancing a series of possible root causes as an explanation for terrorism leads to very different, and far more difficult, solutions, which would require addressing the impact of U.S. foreign policies and which would likely diminish, rather than advance, U.S. power on a global scale. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 895

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that explanation-shaping is itself a form of political power—who gets to define the cause controls which solutions are thinkable—operates across policy, media, and scholarship.
• XREF: Parallels the Social Control of Impersonal Trust pattern where institutional framing constrains what behaviors become possible; also connects to the claim in the Law Merchant work that institutions shape incentives. — connects to: Calling terrorism transcendent evil blocks the worldly analysis needed to counter it — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1430