Where Islamic Terrorism Goes To Die

Where Islamic Terrorism Goes To Die

July 24, 2012: In the south, the government has halted the growth of Islamic terrorism violence over the last few years, but it still having a hard time dealing with the culture of corruption and violence down there which has left the Moslem minority behind the rest of Thailand economically. Foreigners and Thais find it much easier, and more profitable, to invest anywhere but the Moslem south. The government keeps adding more incentives to change this and is not having a lot of success. Most Thais balk at spending what it will take to make the Moslem south an attractive place for economic investment. Meanwhile, the heavy police presence around schools is making it easier for more Moslem kids to get an education, which leads more of them to leave the south and look for better jobs in the Buddhist north.

Thailand is one of many countries in the area where Islamic radicalism gained a foothold before, and especially after September 11, 2001, but was never able to grow much. The local Moslems were not enthusiastic about establishing religious dictatorships and soon became hostile to growing Islamic terrorist violence. The loss of local support put the Islamic radicals at a big disadvantage, one they have not been able to overcome.

Nearly a decade of Islamic terrorism in the south has not hurt the Thai economy, which continues to grow. This includes the large tourist resorts in the south. The Islamic terrorists have, for the most part, been kept out of the tourist areas, which provide badly needed jobs for many Moslems.

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/thai/articles/20120724.aspx

Nemo me impune lacesset,

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"The chief aim of all government is to preserve the freedom of the citizen. His control over his person, his property, his movements, his business, his desires should be restrained only so far as the public welfare imperatively demands. The world is in more danger of being governed too much than too little. It is the teaching of all history that liberty can only be preserved in small areas. Local self-government is, therefore, indispensable to liberty. A centralized and distant bureaucracy is the worst of all tyranny. Taxation can justly be levied for no purpose other than to provide revenue for the support of the government. To tax one person, class or section to provide revenue for the benefit of another is none the less robbery because done under the form of law and called taxation." John W. Davis, Democratic Presidential Candidate, 1924. Davis was one of the greatest trial and appellate lawyers in US history. He also served as the US Ambassador to the UK.