After the attacks of September 11, 2001, George W. Bush and other world leaders (including the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair) stated that the roots of terrorism were poverty and desperation and for that reason, the “War on Terror” should also be a war against poverty. However, many of those who use terrorist tactics are neither poor nor desperate people; in fact it is the very opposite. Two clear examples are Osama bin Laden; who was the son of a Saudi billionaire, and Ramzi Youseff, who was educated at Oxford College in the UK. Both came from higher socioeconomic levels. These two examples show us that poverty has been misperceived as a root cause of terrorism and current efforts to improve the lives of people through foreign aid will not help to decrease the risk of people joining terrorist groups. …show more content…
But then, why people engage in terrorism? Many people (especially young people) respond to the feeling of subjugation and oppression with anger which lead to violence, especially under foreign occupation. In other words, people join terrorist groups not because they are poor; they join because they are angry. To give an example, the Middle East has been under military occupation supported by the Western World for more than 25 years, the result has been a campaign of hatred against the US and its western allies by the people who live in these areas (no by their governments). Another example is the case of Israel and Palestine. Palestinian people feel oppressed, discriminated, and marginalized by the government of Israel. They also recognize that the US is the provider of tools and weapons to maintain this oppression. For that reason, the goal of the Palestinian people is to destroy the oppressor and also the facilitator of that