Causes of terrorism
One can argue over whether 'wealth and freedom' is a cure for terrorism or not but it is pretty hard to argue that western meddling in the middle east, especially that of the US, has made it a prime target.
Compare with Switzerland, who is also a rich and free country that people who "hate us for our freedom" would presumably want to attack. Yet there has never been a terrorist attack on Switzerland (I think there were a couple incidents with flights leaving there bound for Israel, but it is pretty obvious the latter was the actual target)
Every time we do something in the middle east it always hurts us in the long run. Can anyone come up with an example of the US or Britain meddling in the middle east that made things indisputably better in the long term? Examples from 1990 or earlier please - sometimes it takes a long time for the blowback (i.e. overthrowing the democratically elected government in Iran to replace with the Shah took 26 years before it blew up in our faces) Had we not done that yeah maybe it hurts US companies a bit not getting the contracts the Shah handed to us. We could have and should have been the friend of a naturally occurring democratic government in the middle east, since that is supposedly one of our goals when we publicly overthrow a government (when we do it in private, it is usually to set up an evil dictator who will do our bidding)
Iran would have exercised its influence throughout the Arab world and probably resulted in similar governments springing up. Who knows, maybe Saddam Hussein never rises to power and Iraq is a democracy today. Or maybe not, but the people of both would probably be a lot better off today regardless. Maybe Iran's new government didn't want to choose sides in the Cold War, but a modern democracy in the middle east would have been a great trade partner over the years, and the US economy probably would have ended up ahead in the long run even if the oil companies didn't get their great deals that provided short term gains but caused long term harm.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
