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There is no peaceful co-existence with terror

Jobs for Jihadists? Will that be President Barack Obama’s new strategy for battling Islamic terrorists? It is a real possibility, in view of Obama’s thinking.

Millions of young Muslim men throughout the world are unemployed. Yet the vast majority of them have never decided the answer to their dilemma is to behead someone.

Representatives of about 60 countries met in Washington last week to discuss a unified approach to Islamic terrorism – a term the president will not even use.

Social, economic and political solutions were a focus of the event.

“Groups like al-Qaida and (the Islamic State) exploit the anger that festers when people feel that injustice and corruption leave them with no chance of improving their lives. The world has to offer today’s youth something better,” Obama wrote in an op-ed piece published in the Los Angeles Times.

Many armed revolts have stemmed from economic, social and political frustration. But Islamic terrorism is something different.

Revolutionaries – including, by the way, the Prophet Muhammad – usually are content to subjugate foes. Modern Islamic terrorists make it clear their goal is to slaughter those whose beliefs do not match precisely with theirs.

There can be no peaceful co-existence with them.

The terrorists’ social media campaigns reach hundreds of millions of Muslims – again, many deeply unhappy with their lots in life – throughout the world. Only a tiny percentage find recruiting videos of beheadings and immolations to be appealing.

Realistic leaders from the terrorist heartland in the Middle East, most of them Muslims themselves, understand the answer to Islamic terrorism is to destroy groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida.

Yet Obama apparently believes resources and attention should be diverted from that to provide feel-good programs targeting young Muslims.

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