Algiers bomber's family blames "ignorance": paper

ALGIERS (Reuters) - The family of a suicide bomber who killed 17 U.N. staff in Algiers this week said he joined Islamist rebels after failing to get a taxi license and was motivated by "ignorance, not poverty", a newspaper reported.

"We got nothing from al Qaeda, we are still very poor," Bechla Rabah's oldest son Younes told Echorouk. "Ignorance, not poverty, this is what pushed my father to blow himself up."

Al Qaeda's North African wing claimed responsibility for twin car bombs on Tuesday that killed more than 30 people at the U.N. offices and a court building, saying it had targeted "the slaves of America and France".

Algerian newspapers said Rabah's days were numbered as he was in a final stages of cancer. They said two of his sons were members of the Islamic Armed Group also known by its French initials GIA and were killed by security forces in the 1990s.

Rabah's 82-year-old mother told Echorouk she heard of his death from the newspapers and had not seen her son in more than a decade. Rabah, who was 63, joined Islamist rebels in 1995.

"The police came to do a DNA analysis. They told me the results will be ready by Saturday. I continue to believe my son is innocent. I need strong evidence to change my mind," she told the national daily in an interview at the family's home in Heraoua, a poor village 20 km (12 miles) east of Algiers.

"He wanted to work as a taxi driver," said Rabah's daughter Asia. "But he did not get the go-ahead from the administration. That's why he decided to join the FIS in the 1990s."

he joined Islamist rebels after failing to get a taxi license

Just damn.

This illustrates an important point. It isn't just about Islamic extremism. Extremists of any stripe -- Islamofascists, Nazis, Bolsheviks, Maoists, Christian Identity, and so on -- recruit folks who have some sort of seemingly minor beef, convince them that the system is corrupt and must be destroyed, and bit by little bit convince them that theirs is the way.

In all these movements, including the one we now face, there is a small core of ideologues who have a broader vision, and a large number of foot soldiers who start out simply angry, and have that anger bent in the direction the ideologues want. You don't see Osama strapping on a suicide bomb vest, do you? To quote Magneto in the last "X-Men" movie, "The pawns go first."

This guy illustrates the fact that we have to have a two-pronged approach to fighting terror. First, to cut off the head of the terror organizations, as we're doing to some effect. Second, to cut off recruiting by presenting a preferable alternative.

We can't just impose democracy; we've got to sell it. This guy couldn't get a taxi license. He became convinced a corrupt government was keeping him down. He might have become a pro-democracy political activist instead of a terrorist, but the terrorists got to him first.

The USA has more military might than any nation in the history of the planet. More money than any other nation on Earth. More pluralism than any other country -- name a country, and there are Americans from there, or whose ancestors are from there, who know their culture and speak their language. A media machine with global reach. Winning this war will take all those tools, every one in the box, not just the hammer.

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