[Saxon]

Poverty doesn’t lead straight to terrorism and extremism, but it can make the trip a lot easier. The very poor don’t know any different, but those reasonably well off in a poor society feel the poverty more acutely. A lot of terrorists have come from middle class families and they want to help the worse off. Living here in Kenya, I have a much better feeling for injustice and poverty than I ever did in Canada. Perhaps these pilots saw the poverty at home and the riches elsewhere and got upset about it.

Hearts and Minds might not stop everyone, but 40 billion of reconstruction and food would earn a lot of good will in Afghanistan. Next time someone gets up to preach against America, people might not listen so closely or they might even stand up in the back row and say “Shut up bin Laden, those guys built the school my kids go to.” It would probably also end up taking out the Taliban, as their form of extremism wouldn’t stand up too well against material affluence. Saudi Arabia has some serious problems, but social unrest is not one of them.

One can look at the treatment of Germany after WWI and Hitler’s rise on the back of resentment to the Versailles Treaty. One can compare that to Germany after WWII and the Marshall Plan. I think Hearts and Minds can work, but it has to go all out. Not one or two million here and there, but a serious financial kick in the ***. And not just food and drugs, but serious construction, things that people see every day. Hospitals, schools, sewers, roads. Match that with Dogscoff’s assassinations (which are an excellent, low key way to punish the wrongdoers and not upset everyone else) and I think we would get somewhere.

Sure, it might not work, but we also have no guarantee that the military options will work either. As such, try and give lots of the contracts to US companies, so at least jobs are created and a lot of the cash goes back in to US economy as taxes. Not all the contracts, you also want to create jobs in Afghanistan, but lots.

Anyway, I will get back to my Technicolor world of dreams…