What is the cause of the violence, the radical terrorism in Iraq, Lebanon, Horn of Africa? If the following analysis is true, currently the US and the West are solving the wrong problem.

The outlines of the emerging "new direction" for Iraq that combines economic reconstruction with continued military presence will exacerbate a reality the decision makers do not understand. The linked article is well worth reading, it is clear the near term tactical fixes only address symptoms.

In A Matter of Pride: Why we can't buy off the next Osama bin Laden, Peter Bergen and Michael Lind look at the bigger picture:

Reducing poverty in the Middle East and around the world is a laudable goal in itself, for humanitarian reasons. But it would be a mistake to treat prosperity as a universal solvent that can deprive jihadists like bin Laden of allies and sympathizers in populations that feel humiliated by foreign domination or frozen out of politics. Ultimately, both foreign occupation and domestic autocracy are political problems that must find political, not economic, solutions. The campaign against jihadism and the campaign against global poverty are both justified. But they are not the same war. 

The central role of communal humiliation in inspiring terrorism is the key finding of University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape’s study of suicide bombers, Dying to Win. According to Pape, two factors have linked Tamil, Palestinian, Chechen, and al Qaeda suicide bombers. First, they are members of communities that feel humiliated by genuine or perceived occupation (like the perceived occupation of the sacred territory of Saudi Arabia by virtue of the presence of U.S. bases, in the eyes of bin Laden and his allies). Second, suicide bombers seek to change the policies of democratic occupying powers like Israel and the United States by influencing their public opinion–in a sense making the occupying power suffer the same level of humiliation they have felt.