Deroy Murdock:
The whole world is laughing at the Obama administration’s latest weapon in the War on Terror: jobs for jihadists. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf unveiled this new policy on Sunday.
“We cannot kill our way out of this war,” Harf explained on MSNBC. “We need, in the longer term, medium to longer term, to go after the root causes that leads [sic] people to join these groups.” She continued: “We can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance. We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people.”
Amid ensuing global giggles, Harf doubled down on this initiative.
“We’ll take direct military action against these terrorists,” she told CNN yesterday. “We have done that. We are doing that in Iraq and Syria. But longer term, we have to look at how we combat the conditions that can lead people to turn to extremism.”
I added this morning to the guffaws over this fascinating new way of treating the people who just beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians and burned alive 46 people in the last few weeks. I decided, nonetheless, to test theHarf Hypothesis. Does poverty equal militant Islamic terrorism . . . er, I mean, extremism? (Let’s not make anyone uncomfortable!)
The Global Terrorism Index is the work of Statista, a statistical portal that aggregates more than 18,000 data sources. As Statista explains, it “systematically ranks countries of the world according to their terrorist activity. Iraq ranked first on the global terrorism index with a score of 10 points, making it the country most affected by terrorism on Earth.”
For 2014, here are the top 10 nations affected by terrorism, as well as their Global Terrorism Index scores:
1. Iraq (10)
2. Afghanistan (9.39)
3. Pakistan (9.37)
4. Nigeria (8.58)
5. Syria (8.12)
6. India (7.86)
7. Somalia (7.41)
8. Yemen (7.31)
9. Philippines (7.29)
10. Thailand (7.19)Meanwhile, the Central Intelligence Agency publishes and regularly updates The World Factbook. Among other things, it ranks 228 nations around the world, from top to bottom, according to per-capita GDP, estimated on a purchasing-power-parity basis. (I tried to search the CIA’s website for something like Statista’s Global Terrorism Index. Oddly enough, the website’s search function is totally broken.) Here are the ten poorest nations on that list, along with their respective statistics.
If poverty was the root cause of genocidal violence, the world population would have been decimated during the Great Depression. Moreover, the religiously-based targeting of victims and the terrorists’ very declarations while committing these atrocities disproves Harf’s (and Obama’s) thesis.
See “Root of Evil: Let’s Put ISIS on Welfare” at http://wp.me/p4scHf-7s.
Most people have no idea how many jihadists are recruited.
Emotional blackmail is often useful to convince a man or woman to blow themselves up.
Let’s say you are a woman married to a terrorist who only married you to use you.
He arranges you to be raped by a friend or relative then pretends he found out about ”your adultery.”
You get only two choices: 1. death by ”honor killing” with Hell forever, or 2. death via suicide belt and a slight chance at paradise IF you manage to take an Infidel or Jew with you into death.
Let’s say you are a man in prison.
You have been beaten and even raped by some fellow prisoner.
Muslims behind bars offer you safety and a better life behind bars IF you convert to Islam.
So, you do.
Later, after you’re out, another Muslim approaches you and invites you to ”fellowship” with him and his friends.
You are then emotionally blackmailed about your previous rape by a man into either being killed by defenestration which lands you in Hell forever, or you can die in jihad and, if you kill an Infidel or Jew have a slight chance at paradise.
It works.
This pattern is alarming in its repetition.
Poverty has nothing to do with it.
Ayman al-Zawahiri was the #2 under wealthy Osama bin Laden.
Ayman al-Zawahiri was a medical doctor and surgeon in Egypt before becoming the head of al Qaeda.
So poor!
The administration based its statements on erroneous facts yet again. Imagine that.
Thousands of dedicated souls venture into these troubled areas to participate in charitable enterprises to help the poor. Often, they are rewarded by finding their bodies in one location and their heads somewhere else. Either this is not the solution to the problem or they don’t want our help.