Ever notice how even though the Civil War was a century and a half in the past, there are a lot of places in the Deep South where they still haven’t gotten over it? That longing for the antebellum world led to the greatest terrorism movement in American History – the Ku Klux Klan. During it’s reign of terror thousands of American citizens were lynched, burned, shot, blown up, or otherwise murdered.

England conquered Ireland a half a millennium ago, yet the Irish Republican Army was still fighting in the 20th century, achieving success in the southern counties in 1920, while the major fight in Northern Ireland continued until the Irish Accords of 1997 (and some renegade factions still fight today).

Ever notice how the threat we face is not from Turkish Muslims, or Indonesian Muslims, or Bangladeshi Muslims, but very specifically from Arabic Muslims? Once again, they had a flourishing and advanced civilization while Western Europe was in the Dark Ages. (Ever notice how our numeric system is based on “Arabic” numerals, and advanced mathematics is called Al-gebra (yes, algebra is an Arabic word). In literature and medicine the Arabic world was well ahead of the rest of the planet.

But in the 15th century the Arabic lands were conquered by the Turkish Ottoman Empire. While the Turks are Muslim, their system of government stifled the Arabic culture for centuries. Much later, starting in the late 18th century and going well into the 20th century, European countries began to pick off the pieces of the Ottoman “sick man of Europe.” It wasn’t until my lifetime that most Arabic countries finally gained total independence.

The damage was done. Western Europe emerged from its millennium in the darkness to achieve phenomenal success culturally, politically, economically, and scientifically. The Arabic lands had hardly progressed beyond that glorious era 500 years ago. Every Arab knows their history and their lost culture. And many Arabs feel a sense of frustration and anger that history somehow betrayed them. While it is irrational, some take this frustration out on the dominant culture – the West.

If you want to understand the mind of an Arab terrorist, just visit the American South, or Northern Ireland, or the Basque region of Spain. It’s not poverty. It’s not ideology. It’s not religion. It’s history.

Nope: it’s only Muslims commtting contemporary terrorism, somehow despite the fact that most Muslim countries are not amongst the least developed countries of the world. Maybe it’s something other than one’s material well-being that accounts for terrorism — say, one’s religion?

(Interesting study on the relationship between poverty and terrorism puts to rest the “poverty causes terrorism” nonsense):

http://www.nber.org/papers/w9074

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118358989440157536-search.html