In the 1970′s The Shah of Iran’s government paid for Iranian college students to study in America. While they were here, they participated in planning his overthrow. Today, many of the terrorists who are wreaking havoc on the world are educated in the United States. We’ve always known that we export a good college education, but are we also exporting terrorism? It wouldn’t be intentional, but the question is whether people are more free to plan their government over throws while living in the United States.
No one would ever want to ban foreign students because the best and the brightest come from every corner of the planet. Many American businesses snatch of foreign students as fast as they turn the tassel on their mortarboard. As an import, they are a human resource gift. As an export, our college educations mostly send these young people back to do good things in the world. It’s not the education. It may be that these criminals are using our celebrated constitution against us.
They have the right to gather, exercise free speech, have limitless access to media and internet outlets, and they are not oppressed for asking hard questions or having opposing views. They take their new found power and resources home with them, and for the most part, start a noble movement. However, war is chaos, and out of that the education export becomes the enemy of the free world.
To be fair, the U.S. isn’t the only free and open country who can be “blamed” for exporting terrorists. It happens all over the world. People who will use violence to further a cause will do it from any springboard available.