Here’s an obvious question that doesn’t get asked enough: if there were not so much economic inequality in the world would we have to worry as much about terrorism?
At the Nuclear Security Summit recently concluded, Obama warned again about nukes getting in the hands of terrorists. Pretty scary. It would, as he emphasized, make it a different world.
Is there is a link between human misery and terrorism? Is terrorism, in fact, the last resort of the desperately poor and hungry–a large portion of the world’s billions–or those who identify with them? It’s true that not all the miserable become terrorists. And yes, there have been wars based on religious differences forever, it seems. But how about it: is it reasonable to think a that a world with fewer miserable people, would produce less terrorism?
To agree to that proposition is to say that in some sense terrorism is rational and reasonable, as well as horrible. But much of the language and thinking of the so-called “war on terrorism” insists that terrorists are the opposite. They are “mad men” who “ hate freedom” or “ hate the West.”
If we believe that there is a link between misery and terrorism, such characterizations should be replaced by “they hate being the wretched of the earth, they hate the economic systems and governments which produce inequality.”
If the answer is Yes, there is such a link, shouldn’t a major goal of all states and leaders and individuals, be equality?
If inequality is in fact the biggest problem, the problem underlying the most frightening symptom, we should, should we not, if only out of rational self-interest, vote always with the aim of reducing inequality everywhere.
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