Once we agree that the military solution is not only problematic but futile (as it often is) the conversation seeks causes in the hopes of finding remedies. Peter Bergen looked at Obama’s last speech. http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/19/opinion/bergen-terrorism-root-causes/index.html

The Obama administration this week hosted a three-day conference on “Countering Violent Extremism,” which is a government euphemism for how best to deal with Islamist terrorism.

Already a predictable tsunami of nonsense has washed over us about the “root causes” of terrorism. We have heard from Obama administration officials and even the President himself that terrorism has something to do with lack of opportunities and poverty. Obama said on Wednesday that “we have to address grievances terrorists exploit, including economic grievances.”

He said, “when millions of people — especially youth — are impoverished and have no hope for the future, when corruption inflicts daily humiliations on people, when there are no outlets by which people can express their concerns, resentments fester. The risk of instability and extremism grow. Where young people have no education, they are more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and radical ideas…”

This “cause” strikes me as overly convenient for a number of reasons including the reality that we don’t wish to publicly recognize that just as with Bin Laden we have sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind yet once more. This is the dysfunctional family dynamic of empire.

Obama would rather find the cause as “lack of the American way. Our formula works. If you give people a realistic diversion of Internet and cable TV, a nice vacation from time to time, religious freedom to cultivate your private emotional soma, and a retirement nestegg they will be compliant, orderly and focus on the petty nuisances of family squabbles and under-performing sports franchises.” It is of course the just updated “bread and circuses”

It strikes me that the quest for the source of terrorism is like the quest for the historical Jesus, we look down the dark well only to see our own reflection. If they would only be western middle class secularists then they wouldn’t go to Syria. The only problem is, of course, many of them have tasted the Western way and rejected it.

Can you take Christianity out of the equation in US policy in the Middle East? Can you take Islam out of ISIS? pvk