The WHite House has released what it calls
The National Strategy for Victory in Iraq (
pdf), in which it turns terrorism into an idealogy:
The war on terrorism is the defining challenge of our generation, just as the struggle against communism and fascism were the challenges of generations before. As with those earlier struggles, the United States is fully committed to meeting this challenge. We will do everything it takes to win.
Everything except fighting the reasons that terrorists take up arms, that is.
Terrorism is a symptom, not a cause. The causes for which terrorists are willing to fight, and in some cases, kill themselves vary. But many Muslim fundamentalists have made one thing clear, and that is that they no longer wish to be under the yoke of what they see as an outside empire. But they use the obvious disparities between the few extremely wealthy royal surrogates and the dire poverty of the many as fuel for recruiting.
The Dubai Ports deal has shown a spotlight on this, and even the SCLM is beginning to take notice.
Dubai is an emirate (one of seven that make up the UAE), with a populatoin of a little over a million, of which 85% are foreigners. Foreigners will never be able to become citizens, nor can they own land there (although there are some work-arounds for those with the cash). These "guest workers" are underpaid, if paid at all. They live in minimal housing, while at the same time working in its busy port and building luxury hotels and even an indoor ski resort.
The NYTimes has a piece that touches on this:
Modernity, however, has not come easy. With 85 percent of the population made up of foreigners, many of them second and third generation, the city faces a simmering demographic and identity crisis.
But that is all. Until Americans, and the rest of the Western World for that matter, begins to understand that the rulers of countries like Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Indonesia, etc. are stealing their nations wealth, not sharing it with their populace, there will be a never ending stream of militants to provide the opposition needed for the Never Ending War on Terror.
And while I am not a supporter of the brutalities of Saddam Hussein, nor do I think Hugo Chavez is a saint, is not it odd that these two countries that have distributed thier oil wealth are the ones that our government demonizes?
For all its talk about democracy, one thing that you never hear from the Bush administration (or previous ones) is a demand that this unbelievable wealth be shared equatably. We can force this through educating more Westerners to what life is like there. I encourage those with first hand experience to relate their stories.