Homegrown Hatred
Washington Post.com
Please read the entire article at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/15/AR2005071501555.html

By Colbert I. King
Saturday, July 16, 2005; Page A17

Two days after the terrorist attacks in London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair pointed to what he called terrorism's root causes: poverty, lack of democracy and the Middle East conflict. Blair said, "Where there is extremism, fanaticism or acute and appalling forms of poverty in one continent, the consequences no longer stay fixed in that continent, they spread to the rest of the world."

All of which may be true. President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have said pretty much the same thing. What any of that means as far as the London explosions are concerned is, however, another question.

Blair now knows, but apparently didn't suspect when he spoke last week, that three of the four alleged bombers were born and raised in an economically thriving democracy called Great Britain. The three men of Pakistani descent did not, by all accounts, lead lives steeped in economic desperation. The fourth bomber also did not hail from the turbulent Middle East. He was, according to U.S. law enforcement officials, a Jamaica-born British citizen.

...

The ranks of terrorist groups, however, also include young men and women from the middle class. The feelings they seem to share across the board, she said, had to do with humiliation, a desire for a clear identity, and a belief that they can control more through their deaths than through their lives. They have come to see murder-suicide and martyrdom as just rewards for avenging the harm done to their religion and to Muslims in other countries.

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Please read the entire article at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/15/AR2005071501555.html