Ever notice how a certain political ideology assigns the woes of the world to poverty and ignorance? If you're poor and uneducated you can do most anything and it will be explained away by liberals that the cause of your actions is that you're poor and uneducated. Aside from the facts, we've recently read how poor conservatives give more to charity as a percentage of income than rich conservatives and far more than any liberals, this argument fails to allow for the existence of bad people in the world. No one is really bad or, shhh-we have to just whisper the word "evil". They're just uneducated. and if we fix their poverty problem they can get educated or something like that. I forget which is the chicken and which is the egg here. (g)
Barack Obama got it fundamentally wrong in 2001 and he's still getting it wrong. What part of, we will destroy you, doesn't he understand? The prospect of an Obama presidency reminds me that we, the American right along with the silent majority, had to fight the last 30 years of the Cold War alone. those of us who grew up in the sixties were accustomed to a liberal wisdom that said things were actually better in the Soviet Union than the US in many ways and that the Soviet way was the future. A future absent all the woes and strife of capitalism as practised by the impersonal American corporation. Solzhenitzen and the stark evidence of the gulag, nor revelations of the brutal, inhumane nature of Soviet communism from inception, did little to dampen their ardour. Libs see the world in a fundamentally different way, some might say as a fantasy.
Here's what Obama said then and now. Sounds like deep, considered thinking. Maybe it is. But it's fundamentally wrong; these people want to kill us because we are us. There it is-deal with it!
From NRO, Jim Geraghty's blog:
The Campaign Spot on National Review Online
NRO BLOG ROW | THE CAMPAIGN SPOT | ARCHIVES SEARCH E-MAIL RSS
Monday, July 14, 2008
BARACK OBAMA
Obama's Unchanging View that Poverty Breeds Terrorists
Many will mock Obama's post-9/11 column in the Hyde Park Herald. What's a bit more disturbing is how wrong the conclusions about the attackers were, and how Obama continues to believe these things to this day.
Obama writes:
"The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others."
Thank you, Sherlock. How many empathetic terrorists has the world seen?
"Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity."
While any culture is capable of generating evil, certain cultures seem to generate more suicide bombers than others. You just don't find many Amish wearing explosive vests.
"It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty..."
While Osama bin Laden's current net worth is unclear, "U.S. officials found information in early 2000 indicating that from 1970 to 1994 bin Laden received $1 million a year." Most of the 19 hijackers were middle class Saudis. Beyond that:
It is not too difficult to examine whether there is such a correlation between poverty and terrorism, and all the investigations have shown that this is not the case. The experts have maintained for a long time that poverty does not cause terrorism and prosperity does not cure it. In the world’s 50 poorest countries there is little or no terrorism. A study by scholars Alan Krueger and Jitka Maleckova reached the conclusion that the terrorists are not poor people and do not come from poor societies. A Harvard economist has shown that economic growth is closely related to a society’s ability to manage conflicts. More recently, a study of India has demonstrated that terrorism in the subcontinent has occurred in the most prosperous (Punjab) and most egalitarian (Kashmir, with a poverty ratio of 3.5 compared with the national average of 26 percent) regions and that, on the other hand, the poorest regions such as North Bihar have been free of terrorism. In the Arab countries (such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but also in North Africa), the terrorists originated not in the poorest and most neglected districts but hailed from places with concentrations of radical preachers. The backwardness, if any, was intellectual and cultural — not economic and social.
Obama continues:
"...and ignorance..."
Ayman al-Zawahiri, doctor. Osama bin Laden, engineer. Khalid Sheik Muhammad, mechanical engineering degree, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, former project engineer for the Qatari Ministry of Electricity and Water...
"...helplessness..."
...Mohammad Atta, son of a middle-class Egyptian attorney, studied architecture in Cairo, had a graduate degree... The ring of doctors and medical students who tried to attack targets in the UK ...
"...and despair."
Some of the 9/11 hijackers managed to drown their sorrows in booze and strip clubs. Masking their clinical depression, no doubt.
Okay, Jim, so Obama said somethings about terrorists that were wrong after 9/11. A lot of people said things after that horrific crisis that didn't pan out. Why should we care?
Because Obama is still asserting that terrorists are motivated by poverty.
"Al Qaeda’s new recruits come from Africa and Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Many come from disaffected communities and disconnected corners of our interconnected world. And it makes you stop and wonder: when those faces look up at an American helicopter, do they feel hope, or do they feel hate?
We know where extremists thrive. In conflict zones that are incubators of resentment and anarchy. In weak states that cannot control their borders or territory, or meet the basic needs of their people. From Africa to central Asia to the Pacific Rim – nearly 60 countries stand on the brink of conflict or collapse. The extremists encourage the exploitation of these hopeless places on their hate-filled websites."
Connect with Facebook
