What motivates terrorists?

Answer: our own government’s foreign policy of military interventionism.

This question — what motivates terrorists? — is the key question that we must understand in order to reduce and, ideally, eliminate terrorism.

Increased airport security and full-body scanners are not the solution. They do not address the root cause. And they are not, and will never be, 100% effective. There can never be a 100% guarantee that all passengers are not carrying anything dangerous on-board an aircraft. Someone with enough motivation will find a way around any defenses you can devise. It doesn’t require much imagination, really. If you hide a bomb in your anus, do you really think a pat-down is going to find it? If you swallow a knife and say that your prosthetic arm contains metal, do you really think a full-body scanner is going to see the weapon?

Not only are these security measures expensive, wasteful, time-consuming, annoying, and invasive; they are also woefully ineffective. Even worse, they show a lack of respect for personal privacy, and invasion of civil liberties, as people are unfairly detained and discriminated against.

Instead, the question we should be asking and discussing is: What motivates terrorists?

They wouldn’t be committing acts of terrorism if they had no motivation.

Congressman Ron Paul has the right idea:

One thing that is missing here is never asking the question what is the motive. With Abdulmutallab he said why he did it. He said it was because we bombed Yemen 2 weeks ago; that was his motive.

Osama Bin Laden said that he has a plan for America. First, he wants to bog us down in the Middle East in a no-win war, he wants to bankrupt this country, demoralize us, as well as have us do things that motivate people to join his radical movement. It seems like we have fallen into his trap.

You know, why is it off base? Today when the gentleman indicated that he did it because of the bombing, you know what the administration said? They just dismissed it; it can’t possibly be so.

If you dismiss motivations for why they hate us, we can never resolve this. There is hate on both sides, but you have to ask the question, “Why do they hate?” and they usually come up with the reason and we’re foolish not to take that into consideration.

from Ron Paul on Larry King

I’ve embedded the video here:

Do you agree with Ron Paul, Ben Stein, or neither?

One Response to “What motivates terrorists?”

  1. Mike says:

    If you would like to get an idea of what is happening in Haiti and other hotspots around the world i would suggest you do a little reading http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php or even better http://globalresearch.ca/articles/WOR406A.html just to get a perspective of what the rest of the world may be perceiving. I agree Ron Paul is on of the few voices of reason in your country. But the MSM will not give him the time of day.
    Good Luck.
    Mike

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