[ExI] EP was Sarah Palin

[BillK]

On 7/22/10, Keith Henson  wrote:
> When looking for the arrow of causality, the earlier events are
>  particularly suspect.
>
>  But consider the reverse.  Suppose the Irish Catholic women had
>  continued to have far more than replacement numbers of children?
>  (Much like happens in the Arab/Islamic countries now.)
>
>  Then economic growth never would have gotten ahead of population
>  growth.  Given the declining prospects for much of the population, do
>  you doubt that support for the IRA and related social disruption would
>  have continued?
>
>  As humans we tend to look at the obvious (religion fanatics) rather
>  then the cause for the fanatics (a bleak future outlook).
>
>

I am not arguing against your theory in the context of nations going
to war when the nation faces a choice of starve or war with the
neighbour nation. (Although there could be exceptions even to this
where the nation doesn't have enough young men to fight a war).


What I have difficulty with is stretching the theory to apply to
terrorist groups within a nation. The IRA never had more than a few
thousand members. A tiny fraction of the population. They wanted to
stop the victimisation of Catholics in Northern Ireland by the
Protestants who ran everything. When they achieved that objective they
stopped bombing and shooting. I don't see any need to make the theory
more complex than that.

Take South Africa for example. The ANC (a former terrorist group) now
forms the government and the terrorism has stopped.

Terrorist groups usually arise to fight a specific problem. Once that
problem is solved, the need for terrorism goes away.

This doesn't deny your theory of why nations go to war. I'm just
saying it is a stretch to try and apply it to 'little' local problems.


BillK