Nick wrote:
I wrote:
No, that's not obvious at all. I'm pretty sure that many of his
recruits
are middle/upper income types. I would argue that it is the wealth of
the region that stimulates terrorism and that if the Middle East was
economically and politically irrelevant there would be no epidemic of
terrorism.
Wealth or distribution of wealth?
The terrorism is not a product of how the oil wealth is distributed; it's
a product of the interest of the rest of the world in the oil. Their bone
of contention is that we build bases there and that we contaminate their
culture with ours. If they were all poor, they would be relatively
powerless to do anything about it, but because everyone wants what they've
got, they have the leverage and the resources to pursue their ideological
goals.
IMO, if we had continued the energy policies set forth by Jimmy Carter
instead of largely abandoning them in the late '80s, our problems in that
region would be minimal because with some degree of energy independence,
we wouldn't need their oil so much and they wouldn't be so important. To a
large extent we have made them what they are.
This is not to apologize for terrorism, BTW. There is nothing good or
right about Bin Laden and his ilk.
--
Doug
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
