Here Comes the War on Terror, v 2.0

[Mr.Bill]

Yep, I posted a link earlier.. The Brits are really scratching their heads on why so many Brit Muslims are fighting for the Islamic groups against Britain, and so few fight for Britain.

[Indy]

That to me is the scariest part of all of this. It's one thing if a bunch of morons from some dirt hole in Pakistan join up, but when Americans and Brits are leaving to join that--you have to start examining what is going on.

[exploited]

There is a certain type of person who, three hundred years ago, would be shipped to some far flung colony and instructed to behave like themselves amidst the natives. Soon they'd have the whole area under their boot, and they'd spend their time banging slaves, sport killing and getting off to inflicting pain and misery.

The guys who fly to Syria are like that, and radical Islam has provided them an organizing principle. iPads and McDonald's don't appeal to such a mentality... What matters above all else, far more than comfort or security, is power. They can't get it here, so they go there... Meanwhile their parents are flabbergasted at their kids extremism and violence, which they fled in the first place.

[Professor]

[Indy]

Oh cmon a lot of these American dudes didn't have any brothers there to begin with--of them are white!

I know what you mean about killing everybody just creates more generations of them (like with our "targeted" drone strikes) but since we're right back to square one here I think it's time for some new thinking on combating this.

I might suggest getting our damn footprint out of the region and Afghanistan. At least it takes that argument away (as disingenuous as it is).

But then, oil.

[eynon81]

(shrug)

lots of isolated folks in modern Western Society.

[The Dharma Bum]

[Professor]

[The Dharma Bum]

that is not the only issue at hand when you are dealing with generalized isolation from the mainstream values of society.

there is also a rash of mental disorders, an epidemic of school and workplace mass murders, susceptibility to radical socio-religious ideals ("terrorism" both foreign and domestic") etc

when people do everything their social code tells them they need to do and they don't receive the anticipated inclusion into the social pattern it causes a situation of anomie, and social structure becomes atomized

this is what is at the root of all social issues, if people's needs are being met and they are able to actualize as human being on some level there is no incentive to act out against society

[Professor]

Something interesting I just read (perhaps it was in Malcolm Gladwell's new book, or somewhere else, I can't remember). Basically, it pointed out that most terrorists are NOT taken from dirt-poor families with "nothing to lose". They are, in fact, children of wealthy parents/families, who often have some education. This would imply that people's needs being met and being able to actualize as a human being are actually allowing people to focus on other things, like terrorism.

Basically, if you are fighting every day to put food on the table, you don't have time to fight for other things.