Edwards : Poverty Causes Terrorism

Please see this story:

While looking at my blog traffic, I noticed that I got some hits from a website called "Know Before You Vote." It is a single page website with external links to news sites, blogs, and crap.



It purports to give an objective, side-by-side comparison of all the candidates, Republican and Democratic, running for President. It doesn't. And whether you are a Clinton supporter or a Romney supporter or an Obama supporter or a McCain supporter or an Edwards supporter or a (God forbid) Thompson supporter, you should really take a look at this and ask some questions, because there's a whole lotta mis-representin' goin' on...
For instance: In one category called, "Understands the effects of blowback," All the candidates are listed as "NO" except Paul and Obama, who are listed as "YES." As an explanation of what "blowback" is, there are two links, one to an article in an on-line magazine published by a Canadian college. The other is to an article on Military History Online, a privately-owned website. I have no problem in principle with either article. But in support of "Know Before You Vote's" accusation that John Edwards does not understand the effects of blowback is a posting from IN THE DARK from March 18 of 2007. In this posting I talked about how Edwards said that we need to fight global poverty as a means of fighting terrorism; in other words, that poverty is a (not the) root cause of terrorism. This position has been championed by Peter Munya, the US Conference of Catholilc Bishops, John Edwards, Hugo Chavez, Fernando Lugo, Desmond Tutu, Charles Dickens, Muhammed Yunus, myself, and even Pakistan dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf who have been saying that you can't win a war on terror if you don't fight a war on poverty. For the record, the late Holy Father Pope John Paul II believed this too.
The website has no identification whatsoever that ties it to either a campaign or a political action committee or a voter education organization like Project Vote Smart (a non-profit, non-partisan website that allows you to find voting records, issue positions, campaign finances, etc.). I have found that the website is registered to 1&1 Internet, Inc., at 701 Lee Road, Suite 300, in Chesterbrook, PA. I have called them and e-mailed them (click the link and you can too) to find out who the owner of this website is. So far I have not received a response.
I find it very curious and a bit disturbing. I would be interested in hearing from both Democrats and Republicans who think their candidates positions have been misrepresented on this website.
By the way: I'm sure it is pure coincidence, but Ron Paul gets all the positions listed on this website CORRECT...

We now return you to the originally posted story, which concerned John Edwards saying about poverty...


Let's end it.

Edwards isn't going nearly far enough with this proposal, but it's the first sensible rhetoric I've heard from a candidate for President of the United States in a long, long time.

Seeking to link poverty in other countries to the United States’ national security, Edwards argued that militant extremists in nations torn apart by poverty and civil war have replaced government educational systems and are teaching young people to hate the United States.

"When you understand that, it suddenly becomes clear: Global poverty is not just a moral issue for the United States – it is a national security issue for the United States," he said at Saint Anselm College.

What he's talking about spending is a pittance and won't do a whole lot to alleviate global poverty or check the spread of anti-American hatred. But it is better than nothing.

Edwards called for spending $3 billion a year to extend primary education to millions of children in developing countries. Combating terrorism should begin in classrooms, not battlefields, he said.

His plan also includes $600 million a year for health care initiatives, including a worldwide summit on clean drinking water and sanitation and a six-fold increase in funding for clean water programs.

Getting to the root of global poverty will require increasing both political and economic opportunities for the poor, he said, at a cost of about $1.4 billion. And it will require one person to oversee those efforts, he said.

You can keep telling yourself -- if you choose -- that the US occupation of Iraq is a "central front in the war on terror." Why Afghanistan was not the central front in the so-called "war on terror" in the eyes of this administration is a puzzle. But then again, so is the fact that a brutal dictator, Pervez Musharraf, is one of our allies. But this war has cost us an average of $100,000,000,000.00 each of the last four years, and we are in greater danger of being the victims of terror attacks now than we were four years ago.

Many on the right will say that Edwards' plan -- or any plan for that matter that has government spending on welfare rather than warfare -- won't work. I say we're crazy if we don't try it. And worse: if we are serious about fighting a war on terror, a real war on real terror, then it would be immoral to ignore global poverty.