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Why, then, did Justin Trudeau’s remarks to this effect — specifically, that we should look for the “root causes” of these events — trigger such a backlash? Nothing in the notion of looking for causes says that we cannot also deal with effects. Neither is there anything in what Trudeau said that would equate understanding your enemies with excusing them, or explaining away their acts.

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President Barack Obama, expressing the same sentiments that landed Liberal leader Justin Trudeau in hot water earlier this week north of the border, has pledged to direct investigators to determine why Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev may have travelled down the path to domestic terrorism.

“There are still many unanswered questions,” Obama said in a late-night statement at the White House on Friday, shortly after police captured a wounded and bloody Dzhokar, 19, hiding in a boat in a backyard in suburban Watertown after one of the biggest manhunts in American history.

“Among them, why did young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities and our country, resort to such violence? How did they plan and carry out these attacks, and did they receive any help? The families of those killed so senselessly deserve answers.”

Obama also urged Americans not to “rush to judgment.”

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper pilloried Trudeau for saying in a CBC interview that, if prime minister himself, he would “look at root causes” in the aftermath of a similar attack in Canada.