Meet al-Amriki--'the American'--a jihadist in Somalia. Reared in Alabama as a Southern Baptist, Omar Hammami was an immensely popular lad in high school, 'a gifted student with visions of becoming a surgeon', as Andrea Elliott tells us in the NYT Magazine. (A surgeon! Where have we seen that before? Doctors in my experience have a loathing of war that puts them on the edge of pacifism, but an astonishing number of jihadists seem to be doctors or would-be doctors.)
Just as poverty is supposed to be the 'root cause of crime' in western countries, so has it been advanced as the 'root cause of terrorism' in what we used to call the Third World (and indeed in the West). It's nonsense, of course, but these notions die hard, so Ms Elliott devotes much of her very long article to pondering the seeming contradiction. Worth a look. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford
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