I met with a group of seniors today; students I’m mentoring in their writing projects as they apply for certain nationally-known graduate scholarships.
There’s a lot of interest among these soon-to-be Army officers, as one might hope and expect, in international relations. Perhaps less expected was the interest taken in international relations in conjunction with development economics.
But when one of the intelligent and well-read young officers-to-be elaborated upon a claim in his essay by proposing to us that the American campaign to end global terror might most effectively begin by seeking to remedy two of terror’s dominant causal economic factors — entrenched third-world poverty and gross international economic inequality — I steepled my fingers to hide my grin.
“You might want to put that in there,” I said.
That. Is. Awesome!
That’s what makes it all worthwhile, isn’t it?
Wow. Double wow.
I saw, somewhere that I can’t recall of course, that the problem isn’t economics so much, but repressive politics, that sets the fundamentalists off on “their” campaigns of terror. The gist of the article was that if people felt they had a fair shake, they could live with being poor while others profited from their work/exploitation. But if their fundamental (from an American perspective I’m speaking of course) rights were infringed upon–religion, speech, assembly and the like (hopefully not so whacko about the right to keep and bear arms in their well regulated terrorist militia–I hope), that’s what gets “them” wound up and into blowing up themselves and others. Oversimplification here of course. Still, that’s something for the student to examine as well. Wish I could cite the source or even remember when I read it.