I’m confused. I was assured that invading Iraq would only create more terrorists.

In two months of interviews with 40 young people in five Iraqi cities, a pattern of disenchantment emerged, in which young Iraqis, both poor and middle class, blamed clerics for the violence and the restrictions that have narrowed their lives.

“I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us,” said Sara, a high school student in Basra. “Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.”

Atheer, a 19-year-old from a poor, heavily Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad, said: “The religion men are liars. Young people don’t believe them. Guys my age are not interested in religion anymore.”

The shift in Iraq runs counter to trends of rising religious practice among young people across much of the Middle East, where religion has replaced nationalism as a unifying ideology.

While religious extremists are admired by a number of young people in other parts of the Arab world, Iraq offers a test case of what could happen when extremist theories are applied. Fingers caught in the act of smoking were broken. Long hair was cut and force-fed to its wearer. In that laboratory, disillusionment with Islamic leaders took hold.

Let me get this straight. So an individual may claim to support an ideology but then when they are forced to live in that ideology withdraw their support. You don’t say. Really? Average people don’t like to live under austere religious conditions. Having to live in those conditions makes them antipathetic towards such fundamentalism.

And here I figured it would make them more fanatical. More like to join the ranks of Al Qaeda. Turns out freedom is the antidote to fanaticism. Well shucks. Who knew? Technically the conservatives did, but people on the left might have a hard time fessing up to that.

The Supreme Court is going to take up another case about the indefinite detainments at Guantanamo Bay. The readers of this sight have on numerous occasions harped about how this is a violation of their rights (its not) and a violation of the Geneva Conventions (its not). Its easy to criticize a solution to a problem when you are not faced with dealing with that problem.

Lets say you have captured a group of non-citizens on foreign soil committed to doing harm to your citizens. Lets further say no state exists to claim responsibility for those individuals. Releasing them will most certainly lead to the outcome that a portion of them will rejoin groups intent on harming your citizens. Discriminating between those that would do harm and those that will not is virtually impossible. How would you manage this problem?

Bear in mind that if you find acceptable the outcome that some civilian death might occur so that theses individuals are treated fairly you weaken arguments for constraining other rights for the sake of reducing civilian death. The most obvious being gun control.

Alan Krueger, a professor of economics, makes an observation about terrorism.

One set of factors that I examined did consis­tently raise the likelihood that people from a given country will participate in terrorism—namely, the suppression of civil liberties and political rights, including freedom of the press, the freedom to assemble, and democratic rights. Using data from the Freedom House Index, for example, I found that countries with low levels of civil liberties are more likely to be the countries of origin of the perpetra­tors of terrorist attacks. In addition, terrorists tend to attack nearby targets. Even international terror­ism tends to be motivated by local concerns.

So let me get this straight. Those willing to shed other’s blood are less likely to do so when the state they find themselves in respects liberal values. Some of my readers have led me to believe that liberal values hold the same propensity for violence as do other values. Huh. So it turns out that liberal values reduce a citizens willingness to commit violence.

Incidentally this piece is about how poverty is not a very good predictor of terrorism. Even though he has much empirical data, you can color me skeptical. I would like to see how poverty and terrorism was calculated in the studies showing no correlation.

The author notes:

Additional support for these conclusions comes from research I conducted on the nationalities of foreign insurgents in Iraq. Specifically, I studied 311 combatants, representing 27 countries, who were captured in Iraq. Although the vast majority of insurgents are native Iraqis, motivated by domestic issues, foreigners are alleged to have been involved in several significant attacks. I looked at the char­acteristics of the countries insurgents came from, and, importantly, of the countries with no citizens captured in Iraq. It turned out that countries with a higher GDP per capita were actually more likely to have their citizens involved in the insurgency than were poorer countries.

While it’s true that Saudi Arabia has high GDP it not entirely clear how well distributed that wealth is among the citizens. If I had to guess, given that Saudi Arabia is a Monarchy (The old fashion term for socialism) wealth distribution must not be very great. If the other studies that show no correlation between terrorism and poverty are based on GDP I would argue thats the reason.

The author embraces the notion that liberal values reduces terrorism. However, invariably, liberal values lead to wealthier nations which should have improved wealth distribution. I wonder if studies have been done to see if there is a correlation between wealth and liberal values. The data would probably show a relationship giving indirect evidence for poverty at least partly playing a role in terrorism.

One final thing of interest. The author states:

Support turned out to be stronger among those with a higher level of education. For exam­ple, while 26 percent of illiterates and 18 per­cent of those with only an elementary education opposed or strongly opposed armed attacks, the figure for those with a high school education was just 12 percent. The least supportive group turned out to be the unemployed, 74 percent of whom said they support or strongly back armed attacks. By comparison, the support level for merchants and professionals was 87 percent.

This has been my experience working in Academy. So called educated people are really good at apologizing for human butchers. It’s even present on my blog when the most educated of my readers refuse to agree to the proposition that on the whole killing innocent people is a bad thing. Its interesting that the more educated one becomes the less able they are to discern between good and bad. No doubt this is because such thinking is heavily vilified for its lack of nuance. This leads to perverse outcomes like supporting those that intentionally kill innocent civilians and advocating for presidents of oppressive regimes killing our soldiers be allowed to speak.

There is wisdom in good and bad. One must be wise in how it’s used.

According to this article:

An all-out battle for control of Pakistan’s restive North and South Waziristan is about to commence between the Pakistani military and the Taliban and al-Qaeda adherents who have made these tribal areas their own.

Saving Lives:

Note, too, how German authorities found out about the planned attack. They eavesdropped on a phone call from Pakistan to Germany. This is the exact equivalent of the NSA program that is ritually, but inaccurately, described in the press as “domestic spying.” Most Democrats denounce the program as unconstitutional.

Further, it was the NSA program that brought the German terrorists to light:

The arrests were the culmination of an investigation that began a year ago, when U.S. officials alerted German authorities to e-mails intercepted from Pakistan.

And more information about it’s proper use.

Make me laugh every time.

UPDATE: Thanks go to Diatribe.

Still makes me laugh every time.

I just watched it again. Damn thats is so funny.

Both Darwin and Jamie have made this argument against me on several occasions. Here is a decent oped piece arguing against it.

Were violated to get this information.

In a show of force, the NYPD mobilized hundreds of anti-terrorism cops last night after an Internet report of a “dirty bomb” threat targeting the city surfaced, authorities said.

Better to be dead of radiation sickness then let government with judicial and legislative oversight listen in on citizen to non-citizen phone calls outside this country without a warrant.

By trying to save the country George Bush has ruined this country. It boils my blood.

Ain’t nearly as bad when the democrats are in the majority. I guess when your the majority…and you know… have to protect citizens from terrorism, giving departments in charge of security some constitutional wiggle room just ain’t that bad after all.

Is it fair to say the democrats are not as dumb as those in their constituency who argue against these kinds of measures? They realize their is a very real threat and that potential acts of terrorism would be politically devastating if it was shown it could be prevent with this program in place.

I anxiously await strong denunciations of the democrats from Jaime, Darwin and Bettina. Better see the number 3 next to ‘comment’ on this post within the next 24 hours.

Apparently a small portion of those that have been released from Gitmo have turned up in Afghanistan fighting our forces there. Im sure you guys have already heard about this. It’s been covered almost as much as the illegality of Gitmo.

As a news source hoping to convey neutrality you would have a vested interest in covering this story. It precisely the evidence supporters of Gitmo would use to show that detaining non-citizens helps prevent the death of ours and our allies soldiers and citizens.