"High quality of life makes a big difference. When people have a good quality of life, they're chill and less prone to radical thinking. There's a lot of poor people supporting (the) wealthy."- Our favorite Schwinn-riding moonbat, Alex McDonald, quoted in yesterday's Moscow-Pullman Daily News at the Progressive Student Union "discussion" following the WSU College Republicans' airing of the film "Obessesion: Radical Islam's War with the West" Wednesday night.
"They're chill?" What?
Maybe they need a Wal-Mart in Gaza, Alex?
Seriously, this is the most pathetic of all the leftist apologies for Islamic terrorism. It demonstrates just how flawed conclusions can be when viewed through the red-colored lens of American academic neo-Marxists. "It's class struggle!! It's multi-national corporations!! All they need is a living wage, good medical benefits and a labor union and everything will be fine!!"
Hogwash. Osama bin Laden comes from one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia. Mohamed Atta, who crashed American Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, was a degreed architect and town planner. All of the 19 9/11 hijackers came from middle-class families and had college degrees. Shehzad Tanweer one of the London subway suicide bombers, left an estate worth 121,000 pounds.
In his book, Understanding Terror Networks, Marc Sageman studied 172 jihadists. He found that Al-Qaeda members are from the upper or middle class. Sageman notes, "the vast majority – 90 percent – came from caring, intact families. Sixty-three percent had gone to college, as compared with the 5-6 percent that's usual for the third world. These are the best and brightest of their societies in many ways."
Islamic terrorists are motivated by cultural and religious factors. It's ideology, stupid, not the economy.
6 comments:
I believe it was H.L. Mencken who said that liberals who blame poverty for causing crime were insulting the poor. Something similar applies here.
But seriously, as moronic as Alex McDonald's assertion is, it loses points for lacking imagination. Liberals blame poverty and multinational corporations for everything. I think their brains are programs with a form letter with a blank space for the social ill of the day. One day it's poverty. The next it's global warming. Today, it's terrorism.
I have to give Patty Murray the nod here. Nowhere else have I heard the notion that terrorists hate us because we haven't built daycare centers for them.
One thing which you fail to mention (but which I'm willing to bet is mentioned in Marc Sageman's book) is that while a number of these people have very high levels of education, it is likely that none of them were able to find jobs. Do a quick search if you don't believe me, the job opportunities in the Middle-East are very limited, which is often times what helps drive people to radicalism
I'm generally not inclined to publish Chrissy's anonymous misinformed, sophomoric rantings, but this was too stupid and too hilarious not to post.
This, Chrissy, is what Mr. Sageman, an al-Qaeda expert, has to say about your assertion in an article titled "Common Myths about al-Qaida Terrorism"
Myth: Al-Qaida terrorists join their organization out of desperation, because they don't have any marketable occupational skills.
Actuality: About 60 percent of al-Qaida terrorists in the sample have professional or semi-professional occupations. This is changing, as the new generation of terrorists is getting younger, with fewer skills than those of the previous generation
He also states:
Myth:Terrorism comes from poverty.
Actuality:The vast majority of terrorists in the sample came from solid middle class backgrounds, and its leadership came from the upper class. This has been true for most political movements, including terrorist movements, and al-Qaida is no different. Although al-Qaida justifies its operations by claiming to act on behalf of its poor brothers, its links to poverty are at best vicarious.
Tom,
Maybe the terrorism/poverty connection could help to explain why socialized medicine is such a bad idea: the two men who rammed a flaming truck loaded with various explosives into the Glasgow airport were both doctors in the UK. :)
The oil rich Muslim terrorist nations are completely innocent of the poverty in their own nations? The terrorists are so successful because they are stupid and poor? If poverty leads to terrorism, shouldn't we see terrorism on a greater, more personal level? No, my leftist friend, wealthy Muslim revolutionariers are giving the poor people a choice between submission or death. The obvious choice between the two doesn't equal agreement.
I just think about all the people who could have gone to college instead of the terrorist who threw it all away in a plane crash.
About this not being able to find a job... didn't they live in America and not the middle east? How could they not find jobs here?
Also, what about those who became commercial pilots? Was that not marketable? That sounds like a hogwash argument.
But most of all, will someone please think of the children? Will someone cry over the fast 19 kids missed out on college because of these people?
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