Peter Bergen wrote a cover story with Michael Lind for Democracy Journal about what motivates terrorists and how to stop them.
Reducing poverty in the Middle East and around the world is a
laudable goal in itself, for humanitarian reasons. But it would be a
mistake to treat prosperity as a universal solvent that can deprive
jihadists like bin Laden of allies and sympathizers in populations that
feel humiliated by foreign domination or frozen out of politics.
Ultimately, both foreign occupation and domestic autocracy are
political problems that must find political, not economic, solutions.
The campaign against jihadism and the campaign against global poverty
are both justified. But they are not the same war.
