"root cause"From the
press availability today with Bush and Blair:
BUSH: ... we also want to address the root causes of the problem. And the root cause of the problem is you've got Hezbollah that is armed and willing to fire rockets into Israel.
That's like saying the root cause of World War II was the Wehrmacht.
posted by Quiddity at 7/28/2006 01:10:00 PM
"Asked about the biggest threat to their groups' survival, a militant says that 'free secular education for all' leading to an 'increase in the literacy rate' is the gravest threat to the survival of the jihadi groups in Pakistan."
page 230, _Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill_ by Jessica Stern (NY: HarperCollins, 2003)
Free secular literacy for all.
That's what I see as a "root cause."
Free secular literacy in local languages available on all media, from cellphone and computer to hard copy and word of mouth, open source and user hackable.
I'd like to imagine a world where free secular literacy (and numeracy) for all are available, a world where clean water and sanitation are a given, where adequate nutrition for all pregnant and lactating women and children under the age of five is the tandard as it was under Nixon for the Women, Infants, Children program, no means test necessary, back in the early 1970s, a world where there's full housing and employment within a healthy and qualitatively growing ecological system.
That's my thought experiment as to "root causes," at least for a moment.
Free secular literacy for all.
How would it work? Can we get there from here or even entertain the thought?
