The Roots Of Terrorism By The United States

With the rise of Islamic extremist groups, international terrorism has now become a worldwide social dilemma. The roots of this social problem include a variety of possibilities; however, most commonly terrorism is perceived as an issue triggered by the economic and political inefficiency of a country. In recent years this belief was particularly supported during presidency of George W. Bush and later reinforced by the “anti-Islamic” sentiment triggered by the events of September 11, 2001. Likewise Joseph Kahn and Tim Weiner, authors of World Leaders Rethinking Strategy on Aid to Poor, agreed with President Bush’s strategy of financially assisting the poor Middle Eastern nations to combat terrorism. In addition to poverty, transnational terrorism is also attributed to the political

The assumption that these countries have a “broken” system has led the United States to believe that even the spread of democracy would effectively put an end to terrorism. This sentiment of idealism has everyone believing that “Faith-secular and religion-urges us to insist on a freedom for every soul in the service of democracy and salvation” (Fineman 198). In contrast to the proposed analysis, I suggest instead that the roots of terrorism are not based on poverty or political inefficiency of the nation, but are rather triggered by the growth of idealist views held by the United States. Western intervention has increased resentment among terrorist groups making this ideological and political resentment be their primary source of power.

In order to understand the negative effect that idealism could have in relation to foreign policy, it is detrimental to