Originally Posted by jlomon

I agree with much of what you've been adding to these sorts of thread lately. However, this statement is only half correct. Some of the nations in the ME do have "uneducated masses" but some societies have "highly educated masses" that are even more dangerous. Saudi Arabia, supposedly the West's "ally" in the war on terror, is an excellent case in point. They have a literacy rate amongst adult males that goes into the low 90% range, and also have a shockingly high portion of their population with university education, since the Kingdom pays for it. However, there aren't any jobs so most of the young adult males who have just graduated from university hang around the Mosque, listening to the hatred preached against the West, Israel and the Saudi royal family. These people are educated enough to know that their population of 16 million is being raped by the 30,000 or so members of the al Saud family that run the country. And they know that they can bring the family down by interrupting the global petroleum machine that has something like 40% of the world's proven resources in their country.

These people are ripe for radicalization. They're smart, sophisticated and motivated. They feel disenfranchised and are looking for something to believe in other than their corrupt and decadent leaders They pose a greater danger to you and I than some Kurd or Pashtun off in the hills of Afghanistan or Iraq. The uneducated ones don't scare me. Most of the illiterate and poverty stricken are more concerned about how they're going to feed their families this winter. Its the educated ones that scare the hell out of me.

How many of the 911 hijackers were Saudi nationals in the US on education visas?