So here is my new rule of thumb: For every Predator missile we fire at an Al Qaeda target here, we should help Yemen build 50 new modern schools that teach science and math and critical thinking – to boys and girls.
The full article is here. At those prices, how many missiles does the Yemeni government want fired? The Yemeni median voter? (Is there a single dimension in Yemeni politics? If so, what is it?) The average Yemeni teacher? By the way, how would we feel if each al Qaeda attack came with 50 new madrassas?
I usually think that building schools — in the absence of other, complementary inputs — doesn't help much.
We are told:
America’s last great ideological foe, Soviet Marxism, produced its share of violent radicals, but it also produced Andrei Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – because it believed in science, physics, math and the classics of literature. Islamism is not producing any Sakharovs.
Is the problem lack of school buildings? Is there a recipe for building a modern state and capitalist polity in Yemen? I'm all ears. The conclusion is:
…please, let’s end our addiction to oil, which is what gives the Saudi religious ministry and charities the money to spread anti-modernist thinking across this region.
Didn't the Saudis radicalize to a greater extent when their oil income fell? Will nailing the Saudis help Yemen, given Saudi Arabia is one of their main trading partners?
When I am blogging this material, you know I have too much time on my hands at home. I'm not usually this grumpy but I've been locked up for days. Here are related comments.
There are a whole bunch of axis to Yemenese politics. First, you have north v. south. The southerners tend to pro-”communist” but its hard to say to what extent the succesor to the old communist party (which used to rule the south before unification)is still marxist.
A second axis is Sunni Islamism. The main “opposition” party, Islah, can be considered a sunni Islamic party and Islah hates the communists. Most Yemenis (maybe 60%) are Sunni. Although the current president is Shiite, he is seen as politically aligned with the “opposition” by many Shiites, which is one of the main causes for the Shiite Houthi revolt. Indeed, the government is believed to have a tacit agreement with sunni radicals (which may or may not include AL-Qaeda type groups)to fight against the Houthis. However, it is important to point out that Shiites in Yemen are Zaydi, and haven’t historically been close to Iran. Zaydi Shiites are described as the most Sunni of the Shiite groups.
Finally, you have a tribal v. non-tribal dichotomy. The tribal population, which is disproportionately Zaydi Shiite wants central government to vanish (but also thinks that it ought to be running things because the tribes historically politically dominated non-tribal areas and the government is technically run by tribesmen) At the same time, the growth of the oil economy means the state has high revenues and can assert its dominance (while President Saleh offers his own Sanhan tribe massive largess) over tribes. Now that oil is running out the (by Yemeni standards) leviathan like state might have to become even more modest.
And you also have submerged conflicts such as relations with Somalia, and what to do with Somali refugees and the Akhdam black underclass. I know this whole comment is largely irrelevent to the post itself, but Yemen has a lot of axis around which its politics rotates and they don’t all make much sense.
Tyler, get out of the house. Take a walk. Dig your car out.
And tell Tyrone to take a hike.
Not all al Qaeda members are poor, illiterate and downtrodden. Many, including the underwear bomber and Osama himself, are children of wealth and privilege. A disproportionate number, including Mohamed Atta, have engineering or science backgrounds.
In a country where half the population is unemployed, these hypothetical schools would be as likely to add to the al Quaeda problem instead of solving it, absent much broader structural reforms. This sounds like yet another grandiose but simplistic idea from Friedman.
Fun fact for you, “stupid is as stupid does” anon;
There are lots of 17-40 Muslim men. So many, in fact, that the whether or not you have an engineering degree is a stronger predictor of whether you are a terrorist than whether you are a 17-40 Muslim male. Engineers, almost regardless of culture, disproportionately lean towards right-wing extremism (the same way left-wing European graduates leaned towards left-wing bombing campaigns back during the early Cold War).
Will you be advocating screening engineers next, anon? I don’t think so. Now take your xenophobia and stuff it.
Yes, in fact – did you know your little list actually contains Christians with vaguely foreign-sounding names? Bobby Kennedy wasn’t assassinated by a Muslim.
And that there have been more incidents of Christian right-wing terrorism on US soil than Islamic right-wing terrorism in the past half a century?
And, yes, that engineers are overrepresented among both?
Grumpy? Pretend its Iceland. No volcanoes but …
Really… get out your bike and ride.
At a proposed rate of 50 schools, I predict a feedback loop. One missile attack could lead to 50 new schools, where one could harbor and grow more Al Qaeda operatives, making the probability of a second missile attack higher, leading to 50 new schools, etc. eventually yemen would be saturated with schools, people would be so upset with the school-saturation that they would join Al Qaeda. soon Yemen would be a big block of school.
It’s the philosophy, stupid ! Once you imbibe in a totalitarian philosophy and believe that man is owned by a God/religion/clergy/state, then it is considered OK to sacrifice him for the betterment of said God/religion/clergy/state. Nothing will change until the thinking changes. The Islamic world, more or less missed the Age of Reason and [thus] the Industrial Revolution. This leads many of the component states (if you could call them that) to have the same outlook on life/philosophy of medieval feudal/tribal Europe. One characteristic of tribal societies is that they are held together via fear, suspicion and hatred of outsiders. Voila! The Mideast. Unless the philosophy changes, nothing else can by definition. We can build schools, hospitals and McDonalds all day but reducing them to rubble will be day’s work for tribally minded, bloody-eyed people. The thing we miss in all of what’s going on is that the people involved are not victims per se but a logical product of a pre-industrial, feudal society. Imagine if Europe went back to middle-ages values of fealty to the lord of the manor, serfdom and the consequent grinding poverty. How long would it be before certain warlords would start spinning up delirious visions of conquest, booty and crusades?
By the way, how would we feel if each al Qaeda attack came with 50 new madrassas? … Is the problem lack of school buildings? Is there a recipe for building a modern state and capitalist polity in Yemen? I’m all ears.
Hmmm… as I recall, violent religious persecution at one point induced a lot of folks to board wooden ships and cross the Atlantic to build villages in the midst of land occupied by hostile indigenous peoples.
Engineers, almost regardless of culture, disproportionately lean towards right-wing extremism
Source, please, David?
(And could you define “right-wing” in a non-country-or-culture-specific manner?
“Right-wing” in european politics is more or less moderate in the US, last I checked.
Are libertarian engineers, who I suspect to be overrepresented in engineering as opposed to the general population, “right-wing”? Or no-wing?
Resorting to a left/right dichotomy as your primary tool of analysis is not reassuring.)
Gasp! A column by Friedman that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny! Flies in the face of social science research. Shocking! Unprecedented! Stop the presses!
@ Sigivald – right-wing position of engineers is one of the things Gambetta and Hertog cite in their by now quite well known paper on Engineers and Jihad:
http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/gambetta/Engineers%20of%20Jihad.pdf
These schools we are talking about building, it’s an interesting idea but in these economic times with our government’s lack of follow-through, how can we be sure that we’ll get around to blowing them up?
A Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (drone) system costs about $4.5 million, which would buy a lot of schools, but it isn’t really a missile. Rather, it is a long-endurance, remotely piloted aircraft, capable of reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition, missile delivery, and combat search and rescue.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MQ-1_Predator
Albert:
Yeah, because if you wanted to convince me to be on your side, there’s nothing that would do that better than, say, blowing up every Catholic church in Maryland to retaliate for an IRA bombing in London which had some tenuous connection to a fundraiser in the US. That would certainly convince me which side I was on.
Where will they find the teachers to teach critical thinking? They seem to be in pretty short supply at home.
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