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DOES UNDERSTANDING WORLD POVERTY HELP US UNDERSTAND TERRORISM?

By Steve Beren

"Understanding world poverty" is certainly a worthy goal. We need not only to understand poverty, but to work at eradicating it. But when some people suggest "understanding world poverty" as the way to "understand terrorism," a big mistake is being made.

First of all, the implication is that there is an identity between the world's poor and the terrorists. But that is not accurate, and it is unfair to the world's poor. Over 99% of the world's poor had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks. And those who carried out the terrorist attacks were largely middle class and upper class fanatics funded by the super-wealthy.

What if, in really "understanding the roots of terrorism," we discovered that terrorism is rooted not in poverty, but in wealth? What if we discovered that billionaires -- the oil elites of Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations -- were behind terrorism? What if we discovered that billionaire royalists, billionaire monarchists, billionaire oil despots were backing and fomenting terrorism? What if the funding of terrorism could be traced to the Arab billionaires? What if the spreading of hatred in the Muslim educational system could be traced to the dictatorial rulers of the Arab masses?

What if money from these oil-controlling wealthy autocrats and princes was providing the funding for suicide bombers and weapons of mass destruction? What if these weapons of mass destruction found there way from Iraq into the hands of Al Qaeda or similar forces? What if a terrorist attack was launched on Los Angeles or London or Seattle or Chicago, killing many thousands of people?

Would the critics of the U.S.-led war on terrorism, who now criticize the U.S. government from considering a pre-emptive attack against the Iraqi dictatorship, switch over and instead complain that Bush "didn't act soon enough to prevent Iraq from developing and distributing weapons of mass destruction"?