This Harvard News article is interesting (and timely):

A John F. Kennedy School of Government researcher has cast doubt on the widely held belief that terrorism stems from poverty, finding instead that terrorist violence is related to a nation’s level of political freedom.

To those of us committed to the principle of limiting government and expanding freedom, this is not surprising.

Before analyzing the data, Abadie believed it was a reasonable assumption that terrorism has its roots in poverty, especially since studies have linked civil war to economic factors. However, once the data was corrected for the influence of other factors studied, Abadie said he found no significant relationship between a nation’s wealth and the level of terrorism it experiences.
[...]
Instead, Abadie detected a peculiar relationship between the levels of political freedom a nation affords and the severity of terrorism. Though terrorism declined among nations with high levels of political freedom, it was the intermediate nations that seemed most vulnerable.

Like those with much political freedom, nations at the other extreme - with tightly controlled autocratic governments - also experienced low levels of terrorism.

And one quote particularly apropos Iraq:

“When you go from an autocratic regime and make the transition to democracy, you may expect a temporary increase in terrorism,” Abadie said.

Read the whole thing. For some people, it’s just another pile of facts to toss into the “doesn’t matter, don’t wanna hear it, I still feeeeeel that it’s true.” But otherwise, you might find it fascinating.