Our Gift to the Future

Chuck at Bad Attitudes asks the right question:

Seriously, what is the President’s top counterterrorism adviser doing talking about a multigenerational campaign? Has it occurred to anyone to ask why we might have an enemy so committed, so resolute, that they would be willing to engage in such a conflict with the world’s only superpower? Can we ask ourselves what we might have done to create such hatred, or are we still going on the old “they hate us because we’re free” bullshit? (If that were true terrorism would hit the Swiss and the Swedes.)

Unfortunately, he has the answer.

[W]ar in remote lands using high-tech equipment is the most effective concentrator of wealth we know of. That’s why we keep having such wars, that and the oil. Which is also a pretty decent wealth concentrator.