Understanding terrorism

[tw]

Originally Posted by lookout123

But even in your examples, poverty is not the cause of the revolution, it is the honey that draws the masses to follow a leader who has never felt the sting of the supposed cause.

Poverty is nothing more than a symptom. Like famine, poverty is created first and foremost when the people do not even have a functioning government.

You can fix the symptoms of poverty - build infrastructure - and poverty remains. That is a conundrum that NGOs, World Bank, IMF, etc are all confronting. For even where poverty and famine have been successfully diminished (ie Uganda), corruption in government quickly reverses all the accomplishments.

Arguing poverty as a reason for conflict is bull. That assumption was long since buried by lessons of post WWII history. Poverty is only another symptom of the same problem that also creates revolution, terrorism, etc. Every attempt to solve poverty in a corrupt society has always failed. Any attempt to solve poverty without eliminating the reasons for revolution is stupidity. Learn from lessons taught by 1970s Thailand in their northern provinces. Unfortunately too many have opinions without first learning from where poverty was successfully diminished; where revolution was eliminated.