A little while ago we remarked on the government’s disingenuous account of the ‘root causes’ of ‘violent extremism’. Both President Obama and the State Department’s spokespigeon Marie Harf have painstakingly refused to identify Islamic jihad as Islamic jihad, and have tried to persuade us instead that the real problem is a lack of business opportunities.
It would be tempting to jeer at this as mere ignorance or stupidity (and many on the Right have done just that), but that’s obviously wrong: I know lots of ignorant and stupid people, and they have no trouble understanding that Islamic jihad is what it says it is. This is something else altogether.
Anyway, we ourselves were tut-tutted in our comment thread for reacting with such scorn to this populist propaganda. It is ‘trite and obvious’, we were told, that throughout history lack of opportunity has led to radicalization, and so all that stuff Mr. Obama and Ms. Harf were trying so hard to get us to swallow wasn’t the usual multi-culti Kool-Aid, but rather the cooling nectar of sweet reason.
This is hogwash, and everybody knows it. The idea that a lack of Western-style job opportunities is a sufficient explanation for ISIS’s campaign of conquest, rape, beheadings, torture, enslavement, immolation, vandalism, and related horrors is immediately and effortlessly rebutted by the fact that poverty and lack of opportunity are everywhere, and yet throughout the world today it is only Muslims who seem to be drawn to this behavior en masse. If your theory is correct, Ms. Harf, then where are all the mass beheadings by Brazilians, Haitians, Papuans, Eskimos, Gypsies, and Hindus?
It isn’t even true that poverty is correlated with radicalism among Muslims. Examples of well-to-do jihadis abound, but here’s today’s exhibit: the celebrity ISIS noggin-chopper known as ‘Jihad John’, who is, as it turns out, a Kuwaiti software engineer, from an affluent family, who has a C.S. degree from the University of Westminster.
No, I’m afraid the truth is what we all know it to be. The problem here is not the absence of jobs. It is the presence of Islam.
10 Comments
I suppose you know that today is Johnny Cash’s BD?
I did hear that, yes.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/02/nypd_had_it_right_a_long_time_ago.html
“It is worth noting that when the report was released, NYPD was called “racist” and worse. But time proves the proposition. There is no inevitable link between Muslim people and radicalism; poverty is not the driver; and lack of good governance is not the issue. Professional jihadists are required to move people from curiosity about, or potential interest in jihadist philosophy to becoming active terrorists, and people drop out of this process all along the way (repulsed, one assumes, at some point by the violence).
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/02/nypd_had_it_right_a_long_time_ago.html#ixzz3Sw47uIYZ
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook
Either the White House and State Dept, maintain their own propaganda as a way to avoid the inevitable showdown or they actually believe their own propaganda as a way to dismiss the threat. Avoidance or denial.
libertybelle,
That AT piece is instructive in its analysis and conclusions. Some of which run contrary to Administration spin on the matter. The operational theory of Marxist social/economic cause and effect does not apply to jihadism. Thus our Leftist administration can’t fit the new threat into the old meme. So the NYPD is called “racist” meaning they have spoken that which can’t be allowed to be true.
I simply can not get my head around the obvious truth that half the American electorate supports an anti-American administration. Somebody, please give me a clue how this can possibly be.
Henry,
“please give me a clue how this can possibly be.” I wonder too and have only come up with two reasons. First, secular liberalism has ridden the popular culture into the lives of many people who want easy solutions to hard problems given by celebrity figures. Second, there are many people who vote and then pay absolutely no more attention to the results of their votes.
Then I suppose there are too many plain stupid people who don’t think about matters any farther than their own tv screens.
WW,
The reasons you suggest make sense. But my mind still boggles that they can account for over half the votes cast nationwide.
Has humanity’s last best hope become a jaded uncaring mass of self-serving morons?
Henry,
You know, I bet Pete would explain it for you, if you ask him nicely.
Might also be zombie brain fungus.
Thanx, Malcolm. But I would rather sit in traffic, naked, eating glass.