Reading an article in USA Today about how Al Qaeda has gained a foothold in Iraq, I was reminded of a war that we did not need to have but I also am reminded of why groups like Al Qaeda are able to do what they do: Killing and forcing its brand of extreme Islam upon impoverished people.
There is always a lot of talk about what to do about terrorism. The Bush administration's solution was to bring war upon nations who sponsored terrorist and the Obama administration's solution is to use drones to fly overhead and eliminate individual terrorist. We can debate what the best method is but in reality, we can never find the perfect solution by using violence to rid the world of violence. We can kill one terrorist and ten more will pop up in their place.
The real reason why terrorism is successful, no matter how many terrorists we kill, is that poverty and hunger ravishes nations. It is because Inequality breeds despair, despair breeds hatred and hatred breeds terrorists. When we end hunger and starvation and bring equality to the masses in every nation under the sun, then terrorism will have nothing to feed on, as there will be no fuel for the fire.
Most generally, when I speak about inequality in my blogs, I am looking at America and the 1 or 2 percent of Americans who most of the wealth goes to, but inequality goes much further than the borders and shores of this nation. In countries like Iraq, Saudi Arabia and many of the oil rich countries of the world, there is a small elite group of people who accumulate most of the wealth while other citizens of their own countries do not have food, water and decent sanitation.
Starvation causes the death of tens of millions of people every year including children, while a small group of people builds large supplies of wealth that they have no need of except to obtain power. They could live like kings for the rest of their lives and their families and descendants continue to live like kings for generations with a small portion of what they have, yet they continue to accumulate wealth, allowing hunger and despair to ravish the rest of their countries. Those with such wealth are the main cause of terrorism.
The terrorist, especially those who are the leaders of terrorist organization, uses the despair, the poverty and the hunger, to recruit willing participants to commit violence against innocence, even against those who suffer poverty themselves. It is not usually those who are guilty of causing poverty and despair upon nations who suffer at the hands of terrorist, it is those who struggle themselves just to live day by day, in violent lands with violence evading their neighborhoods and cities.
Most of the citizens of Iraq are simple people living simple lives, who are mostly poor, trying to feed their families. Yet, they face violence on a daily basis and many lose their loved ones to that violence. Extremism is foisted upon them by intolerant so-called religious leaders who claim to represent God in some form, yet deny the power of God by using violence as their answer to disobedience to their way of thinking.
This nation, America, would be controlled by the same type of people if we did not have a constitution that separated church from state. The wealthy are those who control the laws of a nation by controlling those who make the laws, thanks to a political system that feeds on political contributions.
Then the dirty work is done by the extremist and the intolerant, which are willing to go to whatever lengths to force his or her way of thinking on everyone else. The religious right, just like the Taliban and other religious extremist in the Middle East, believe their religion must be enforced by our laws because it is absolute. Instead of ridding the nation of poverty, which should be one of the main goals of religious people, they become an instrument of the wealthy, blaming those in poverty for the ills of the nation and the downfall of the economy. Blindly they are obedient to the hidden voices behind the cash flowing into the coffers of politicians and organization with ulterior motives.
Finally, it is the violent: the NRA (National Rifle Association) the warmongers and those who would make us believe that the solution to our problems is either to introduce more guns into our society or to start more wars overseas to bring our way of thinking to the nations we disagree with.
Once again, I say, poverty and despair is the main drivers of violence, which is fed by intolerance and extremism. Rid ourselves of poverty and bring equality to the world and we will see that there is nothing left to feed the flames of terrorism that grips the world in fear. Feed every child, bring education and knowledge to everyone who seeks it, give medicine and health care to all who need it, and the world will find peace as it has never known. Then everyone can dream for a better tomorrow.
This is a republish from my website: Fidlerten Place