Posted on 09/24/2004 12:35:06 AM PDT by naturalman1975
TIM Costello is a Baptist minister now running World Vision, a Christian charity I've long supported in print and cash.
I supported it because it stuck to what it knew -- doing practical good -- and had not become a gimme-cash haven for activists, unlike Amnesty International and, too often, Oxfam Community Aid Abroad.
But, sadly, Costello, brother of Treasurer Peter, speaks like a politician himself, albeit of the Left.
His cause this week is to get Australia to lift its aid to poor countries, arguing we need a new coalition of the willing to fight terrorism through charity.
Costello isn't saying we must stop fighting terrorists, but warns "the only certain way to beat terror at its source (is) to address world poverty", and here "is where we fall short".
Fine cause. Weak argument.
I know, it's a reassuring idea -- that if only we selfish people were more generous, we wouldn't be so hated. There. Fixed.
Unfortunately, much of the recent grim news shows this is just a fantasy.
First, it's far from clear that poverty causes terrorism. Many of the world's poorest countries, mainly in Africa, pose no terrorist threat at all.
In fact, the countries that spawn terrorism tend, like Iran, to be richer than many. Or they are poor largely because their elites are thieves or incompetents, like the royals of oil-rich Saudi Arabia or the kleptocrats of Pakistan.
Moreover, many of the worst terrorists are from middle-class or even rich families. Think of Osama bin Laden, the billionaire's son. Or his deputy, the pediatrician Ayman al-Zawahiri. Or September 11 ringleader, German-trained engineer Mohammed Atta.
These are people radicalised not by poverty, but by a death-worshipping ideology in which we infidels are cast as devils who must be destroyed, along with our children, whatever we do or say.
Of course, poverty may breed terrorism, but more often terrorism breeds poverty. The Bali bombing devastated the island's economy, just as terrorists are now bleeding Iraq.
What should concern Costello more particularly is that terrorism also makes it dangerous -- even impossible -- to send in the aid he says will do the most good.
Terrorists have murdered aid workers in Afghanistan and forced four aid agencies, including Oxfam, to shut.
Other Islamist terrorists bombed the Red Cross headquarters in Baghdad, closing it, and have now kidnapped, and reportedly killed, two Italian women who were helping Baghdad hospitals as volunteers.
And last year, three Americans assessing Palestinian students for Fulbright scholarships were murdered by Islamist assassins.
Until such terrorists are shot or caught, the areas they run -- like the Gaza strip today and Afghanistan under the Taliban -- will grow poorer, and aid can do little good.
We must get used to an idea that years of peace made us dismiss as brutish -- that sometimes the best aid comes from soldiers. See what good ours have already done by helping to free Afghanistan and Iraq, allowing aid to pour in and two million refugees to go home.
This is fighting poverty by fighting terror, and it often works better than the other way around. What's more, our country has done more of this hard work than most, and deserves praise, not sermons on our selfishness.
Osama was raised in such poverty.....whack!!!...end of argument.
Not this canard again. In actuality to fight terrorism you must defeat despotism.
You may have noticed this is what Bush is working on in the region.
Afghanistan check
Iraq check
Iran next
Saudi Arabia on the menu
Egypt on the menu
And that ideology is called ISLAM.
Whoever thinks terrorism is spawned from poverty is an idiot. It is greed, not need, that begets evil.
I wage a one-man crusade against poverty every day...by going to MY JOB, LIVING WITHIN MY MEANS, and NOT CAUSING CHAOS IN MY ADOPTED REGION, WHICH DRIVES OFF INVESTMENT AND ECONOMIC GROWTH. Sadly, this is lost on a lot of people who feel that "rich" people have some magic money tree that they aren't sharing.
If poverty was the cause of terror, wouldn't inner city residents be blowing themselves up to terrorize the rest of us?
There is a direct relationship between poverty and the power of governments to own, in whole or part, the fruits of human beings hard work, good decisions, and responsible acts. There is a direct relationship between poverty and the power of governments to interfere with the relatively unfettered right of human beings to own personal, real, and intellectual property.
If religious conservatives would relentlessly promote the right of human beings anywhere in the world to own the fruits of their hard work, good decisions, and responsible acts and the right of humans to enjoy the relatively unfettered ownership of personal, real, and intellectual property, they would have a safer and more prosperous world for their message about faith and morality.
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