4 ms·
Seems like a poor explanation given the astronomical wealth quite literally sloshing around in the Middle East, and the fact that all of the 9/11 hijackers were
by hnthrow_65321 13y ago
Seems like a poor explanation given the astronomical wealth quite literally sloshing around in the Middle East, and the fact that all of the 9/11 hijackers were wealthy and educated and that many of the leaders of Al Qaida are western educated engineers.
- rdl 13y agoThe wealth in the middle east isn't particularly equally distributed, even in Saudi (especially in Saudi?). And, getting a government sinecure where it is essentially oil-funded welfare for life, if you're one of the winners, isn't character-building in the way that a middle class engineering job is in another country. Just being rich isn't going to make you better/less violent/etc. -- look at how unhappy lottery winners often are, or ghetto drug dealers, etc. The other interesting part about Iraq and Syria's Baath parties is that they were initially quite secular; in Syria, it's mainly an ethnic thing. In Iraq, it turned into Sunni v. Shia largely due to the Iran/Iraq war, but also was relatively secular before that, in the 1970s. Our nominal "allies" in Syria are actually fairly hardline Islamists (among others).