>Nicholas, it seems your answer boils down to this: Establish socialism, and the problem will get solved.
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>This evades the fact that most of these nations are socialistic in some ways already - they use oil revenues to create big welfare states already.
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>Also, let's look at the kinds of people in Al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden...heir to a huge construction company's fortune. Personal worth about $300,000,000.00 at one time. Used to finance all of Al-Qaeda's operations with his own personal wealth. Then Al-Qaeda go too big for him to pay for it all. So they wound up burying the hatchet with Saddam Hussein and started to get money from his immense coffers for further operations.
>
>Zawahari - second in command...Egyptian medical doctor at one time. No poverty for him in adult life. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed...third in command. Trained as an engineer. Pretty well set up for good paying civilian life. Joined Al-Qaeda instead. Etc. down the ranks.
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>No, this is a matter of ideology and religious fanaticism, not of wealth. We haven't had a really good old-fashioned religious war in the West since the 17th Century. Yes, I know the Communists, Fascists, and Nazis, etc. secularized the worst aspects of religion, but that is a different point. I'm talking about the kind of religious war where one side attacks the other on the field of battle for singing hymns to God in German that the first side sings to God in Latin. We haven't done that kind of thing in the West since the 1600s. After the carnage of those wars Europeans mostly decided to make peace with each other over such things and try to put up with each other's views on such things no matter what. The kind of religious fanaticism we're seeing out of the Middle East now we haven't seen any equivalent in the West since the 1600s.

Well

1 there is absolutely no evidence that Iraq financed or controlled Al-Qaeda in any way. Much of their funding came from Saudi Arabia.

2. The huge majority of Muslims want exactly what you want, to raise their families in peace, worry about paying their rent etc. You need policies that address them not the policies of the last 8 years which have made the lives of moderate muslims much more difficult.


BTW while I'm left leaning I don't think that is related to the issue of international relations and security.
Also this is not about bashing the US. Our policies in this area are nothing great either .