War on Terror

David Brooks makes some very important points about the nature of the enemy and the present conflict. 

 

We have learned a lot about the jihadists...that about 75 percent of anti-Western terrorists come from middle-class or upper-middle-class homes...65 percent have gone to college, and three-quarters have professional or semiprofessional jobs, particularly in engineering and science...Ra ther than deferring to custom, many of them have rebelled against local authority figures, rejecting their parents' bourgeois striving and moderate versions of Islam, and their comfortable lives.  They have sought instead some utopian cause to give them an identity and their lives meaning...

 

This new definition of the enemy has seeped into popular culture...but its implications have only slowly dawned on the policy world.