Obama Admin: Poverty ‘Root Cause’ of ISIS Atrocities

Recent assertions by State Dept. spokesperson Marie Harf expose how the Obama administration continues to operate under wildly false — if not ludicrous — premises in its approach to combating the Islamic State.

During an interview with Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, Harf said:

We’re killing a lot of them, and we’re going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians – they’re in this fight with us.  But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s a lack of opportunity for jobs, whether…

Here Mathews cut her off, arguing that the world will always have its poor, etc.

First, note how much of what Harf said is accurate:

We’re killing a lot of them, and we’re going to keep killing more of them…  But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war.

All good and true.  As I have often argued using the Hercules/Hydra myth as analogy, while killing individual jihadis is good, it is not much of a solution, since, for every one that is killed, several more take his place.  Harf seems to agree and correctly adds:

We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups…

Absolutely true: the root causes must be combated.  And what is the first “root cause” that comes to the mind of Harf, whose words are reflective of the Obama administration?  “Lack of opportunity for jobs.”

In other words, the Obama administration is operating under the patently false belief that Muslims are joining the Islamic State — and  beheading, immolating, crucifying, enslaving, and raping “infidels” — because they are economically impoverished.

This is preposterous and goes against every ounce of common sense.  If the “root causes” have nothing to do with Islam, then one wonders why there is no “Christian State” that entices poor Christians — of which there are billions — to join so they can decapitate, burn, rape, and enslave non-Christians?  Or does Harf think that only Muslims are lacking “job opportunities”?