Posted by Bob's World,

Causation and Motivation are two very different things, and should not be confused. Causation typically lies in poor governance. Motivation is typically some inspiring ideology or big event, or both. Addressing motivation without publicly recognizing and addressing causation is a fraud on the populace.

The duty of government is not to fix the thinking of its populace, the duty of governance is to fix its governance of the populace.
The so called Pied Pipers have always been critical to any social movement. Once the movement has started it may be possible to have a leaderless jihad or other revolt, but I remain skeptical of how effective that will actually be. I think you give way too much credit to the power of good governance to prevent conflicts and radicalization. States are not composed of like minded people who all have the same vison of good governance (not even when Mao attempted to force this type of belief on his people with mass re-education), but rather states are composed of groups/individuals with different ideas of what good governance is. Was it a failure of the U.S. government and Western European governments to provide so called good governance that led to the radicalization of a few extreme leftists who resorted to terrorism? Should we have changed our form of government from a Republic to communism in order to please them? Why did foreign fighters from Morocco, Libya, France, etc. travel to fight in Iraq? Was it a failure of their local governments to provide "good" governance? Or did they travel to Iraq to fight because Pied Pipers on the internet and in their Mosques provided (created) the cause and motivation? Your argument assumes that their own government has failed, so they went to Iraq to fight. I assume our government has failed also, and that is why American kids are going to Somalia and Pakistan to join the jihad? UBL is effective because he is a good leader (many attempted to be Pied Pipers and failed) that provides his followers a vision (sick as it may be), and he comes across as genuine so people who are like minded follow him, and they will continue to follow him (his ideology) after he dies.

As for State reform in the Middle East, just be careful what you ask for. Democracy in countries where the majority live in poverty and are poorly educated, and deeply segregated could and have resulted in radical governments and mass violence. I can't recall who said it, but there is a popular saying the current government in Saudi is terrible, but it is better than any alternative.

Everyone is fighting for what they think good governance means.

Posted by graphei,
I always found it deeply ironic that the Saudis of all people are rehabilitating jihadis.
Why? The jihadis are actual a threat to the Saudi's existence. The jihadis want nothing more than to rule over their holy land.