Posted on 02/18/2015 1:46:09 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
President Obama on Wednesday said he doesn’t describe the United States as being at war with radical Islam because he doesn’t want to give undue credit to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“They’re not religious leaders, they’re terrorists,” Obama said of ISIS in remarks at the White House’s summit on countering violent extremism. Obama argued that ISIS wants to present itself as representing a religion, which is why they refer to themselves as the Islamic State.
He argued the U.S. and its allies need to do everything they can to discredit that idea.
The president’s comments were a direct response to criticism from Republicans who have argued he should say the U.S. is at war with radical Islam.
A Beer Summit is needed.
Obama isn’t a political leader. He’s a butt bandit. I don’t want to give the Democrat Party undue credit so let’s leave it at that.
He was elected.
Twice.
I still can’t process that.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3258934/posts
EDUCATION, POVERTY, POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND TERRORISM: IS THERE A CAUSAL CONNECTION?
[snip]
Conclusion -
The evidence we have assembled and reviewed suggests there is little direct connection between poverty, education and participation in terrorism and politically motivated violence. Indeed, the available evidence indicates that, compared with the relevant population, participants in Hezbollah’s militant wing in the late 1980s and early 1990s were at least as likely to come from economically advantaged families and have a relatively high level of education as they were to come from impoverished families without educational opportunities. We should caution, however, that the evidence we have considered is tentative due to data limitations. In addition, our focus has been primarily on the Middle East, so our conclusions may not generalize to other regions or circumstances.
Nevertheless, less quantitative studies of participants in a variety of forms of terrorism in several different settings have reached a conclusion similar to ours. We are particularly struck by Russell and Miller’s (1983) work in this regard. To derive a profile of terrorists, they assembled demographic information on more than 350 individuals engaged in terrorist activities in Latin America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East from 1966 to 1976 based on newspaper reports. Their sample consisted of individuals from 18 revolutionary groups known to engage in urban terrorism, including the Red Army in Japan, Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany, Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, Red Brigades in Italy and People’s Liberation Army in Turkey. Russell and Miller found that, “... the vast majority of those individuals involved in terrorist activities as cadres or leaders is quite well educated. In fact, approximately two-thirds of those identified terrorists are persons with some university training, university graduates or postgraduate students.” They also report that more than two-thirds of arrested terrorists “came from the middle or upper classes in their respective nations or areas.”
[snip]
Enough evidence is accumulating that it is fruitful to begin to conjecture why participation in terrorism and political violence is apparently unrelated, or positively related, to individuals’ income and education. The standard economic model of crime suggests that those with the lowest value of time should engage in criminal activity. But we would hypothesize that in most cases terrorism is less like property crime and more like a violent form of political engagement. More educated people from privileged backgrounds are more likely to participate in politics, probably in part because political involvement requires some minimum level of interest, expertise, commitment to issues and effort, all of which are more likely if people are educated and wealthy enough to concern themselves with more than mere economic subsistence. These factors could outweigh the effect of opportunity cost on individuals’ decisions to become involved in terrorism.
The demand side for terrorists must be considered as well as the supply side. Terrorist organizations may prefer highly educated individuals over less educated ones, even for homicide suicide bomb attacks. In addition, educated, middle or upper class individuals are better suited to carry out acts of international terrorism than are impoverished illiterates because the terrorists must fit into a foreign environment to be successful. This consideration suggests that terrorists who threaten economically developed countries will disproportionately be drawn from the ranks of the relatively well off and highly educated.
On the whole, we conclude that there is little reason to be optimistic that a reduction in poverty or increase in educational attainment will lead to a meaningful reduction in the amount of international terrorism, without other changes. Stern (2000) observes that many madrasahs, or religious schools, in Pakistan are funded by wealthy industrialists, and that these schools deliberately educate students to become foot soldiers and elite operatives in various extremist movements around the world. She further reports that, “Most madrasahs offer only religious instruction, ignoring math, science, and other 33 secular subjects important for functioning in modern society.” These observations suggest that, to use education as part of a strategy to reduce terrorism, the international community should not limit itself to increasing years of schooling but should consider the content of education.”
At least he called them terrorists. That may be a first.
In rhetoric, I think this is referred to as a “false dilemma”.
” The president’s comments were a direct response to criticism from Republicans “
” The president’s comments were a direct response to criticism from THE ENTIRE COUNTRY, INCLUDING DEMOCRATS.
FIXED IT.
Its oddly hilarious to listen to Obama try to convince us that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam while the terrorists themselves are trying to convince us that it very much does.
A complete failure of the Electoral College system.
Wait... NOW he uses the “T word”?
Because voting for him proved (in the mind of people guilted for decades) that they weren’t racist.
I’ve been calling Obummer a TURD for a long time. Does that count toward the T word?
That sheik 0bama wants to be Caliph matter not to The Caliphate. 0bama should release his Madrassa grades.
That and the lack of any real opposition.
O needs a refresher course on motivation. What is the purpose of the terroristic attacks — to install a religious state with Sharia as the only law. Where is Sharia found — in Islam. Islam doesn’t just “suggest” this terrorism, Islamic writings demand it.
Other types of terrorism are defined by their objective (ie. Maoist Terrorists). It’s a quick way of defining the group by their motivation.
“butt bandit”
It is impossible to say those two words in an angry voice.
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