Yes, and they
were handpicked martyrs, several of whom apparently did not know until the last
minute what the assignment really was and/or meant.
Good human
resources decisions, don’t you think?
Inspire the poor masses…
- KWC
Seems that many
of the 9/11 terrorists came from relatively well off homes, Were not poor
at all. Yet they still turned against the infidels/modernity. arthur
One of the roots of religious
fundamentalism is poverty, and the persistent failure of economic systems that breed
discontent with the secular way. Religion is, after all, much more long lived
and personal than political regimes and economic theories. Philip Jenkins wrote in The Next
Christianity that is why South America and Africa were becoming powerful opponents
of the more tolerant, wealthy industrialized nations. Friedman writes from the
Middle and Near East Muslim viewpoint. Read the last paragraph,
especially. - KWC
The
U.S. war on terrorism suffered a huge blow last week - not in Baghdad or Kabul,
but on the beaches of Cancún.
Cancún
was the site of the latest world trade talks, which fell apart largely because
the U.S., the E.U. and Japan refused to give up the lavish subsidies they
bestow on their farmers, making the prices of their cotton and agriculture so
cheap that developing countries can't compete. This is a disaster because
exporting food and textiles is the only way for most developing countries to
grow. The Economist quoted a World Bank study that said a Cancún agreement,
reducing tariffs and agrisubsidies, could have raised global income by $500
billion a year by 2015 - over 60 percent of which would go to poor countries
and pull 144 million people out of poverty.
Sure, poverty doesn't cause terrorism - no one is killing for a raise. But poverty is great for the terrorism business
because poverty creates humiliation and stifled aspirations and forces many
people to leave their traditional farms to join the alienated urban poor in the
cities - all conditions that spawn terrorists.
I
would bet any amount of money, though, that when it came to deciding the Bush
team's position at Cancún, no thought was given to its impact on the war on
terrorism. Wouldn't it have been wise for the U.S. to take the initiative at
Cancún, and offer to reduce our farm subsidies and textile tariffs, so some of
the poorest countries, like Pakistan and Egypt, could raise their standards of
living and sense of dignity, and also become better customers for U.S. goods?
Yes, but that would be bad politics. It would mean asking U.S. farmers to
sacrifice the ridiculous subsidies they get from our federal government ($3
billion a year for 25,000 cotton farmers) that make it impossible for foreign
farmers to sell here.
And one thing we know about this Bush war on terrorism:
sacrifice is only for Army reservists and full-time soldiers. For the rest of
us, it's guns and butter.
When it comes to the police and military sides of the war on terrorism, the
Bushies behave like Viking warriors. But when it comes to the political and
economic sacrifices and strategies that are also required to fight this war
successfully, they are cowardly wimps. That is why our war on terrorism is so
one-dimensional and Pentagon-centric. It's more like a hobby - something we do
only until it runs into the Bush re-election agenda.
"If
the sons of American janitors can go die in Iraq to keep us safe," says
Robert Wright, author of "Nonzero," a book on global interdependence,
"then American cotton farmers, whose average net worth is nearly $1
million, can give up their subsidies to keep us safe. Opening our markets to
farm products and textiles would be critical to drawing many nations -
including Muslim ones - more deeply into the interdependent web of global
capitalism and ultimately democracy."
The
U.S. and Europe, argues Clyde Prestowitz, the trade expert and author of
"Rogue Nation," should actually shrink their farm subsidies
unilaterally, even if developing countries don't immediately reciprocate.
"Such
a move is essential," wrote Mr. Prestowitz on the YaleGlobal Web site,
"not only as a matter of providing a badly needed boost to developing
countries, but also because the failure [of Cancún] poses a serious threat to
the main hope of generating the economic growth necessary to lift developing
countries out of poverty."
If only the Bush team connected the dots, it would see what a
nutty war on terrorism it is fighting, explains Mr. Prestowitz. Here, he says, is the
Bush war on terrorism: Preach free trade, but don't deliver on it, so Pakistani farmers become more impoverished. Then ask
Congress to give a tax break for any American who wants to buy a gas-guzzling
Humvee for business use and also ask Congress to resist any efforts to make
Detroit increase gasoline mileage in new cars. All this means more U.S. oil
imports from Saudi Arabia.
So
then the Saudis have more dollars to give to their Wahhabi fundamentalist
evangelists, who spend it by building religious schools in Pakistan. The
Pakistani farmer we've put out of business with our farm subsidies then sends
his sons to the Wahhabi school because it is tuition-free and offers a hot
lunch. His sons grow up getting only a Koranic education, so they are totally
unprepared for modernity, but they are taught one thing: that America is the
source of all their troubles. One of the farmer's sons joins Al Qaeda and is killed
in Afghanistan by U.S. Special Forces, and we think we're winning the war on
terrorism.
Fat
chance.
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