The American Conservative: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism

[dummy-du1]

The Logic of Suicide Terrorism

It’s the occupation, not the fundamentalism

Last month, Scott McConnell caught up with Associate Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, whose book on suicide terrorism, Dying to Win, is beginning to receive wide notice. Pape has found that the most common American perceptions about who the terrorists are and what motivates them are off by a wide margin. In his office is the world’s largest database of information about suicide terrorists, rows and rows of manila folders containing articles and biographical snippets in dozens of languages compiled by Pape and teams of graduate students, a trove of data that has been sorted and analyzed and which underscores the great need for reappraising the Bush administration’s current strategy. Below are excerpts from a conversation with the man who knows more about suicide terrorists than any other American.
...
Robert Pape: Over the past two years, I have collected the first complete database of every suicide-terrorist attack around the world from 1980 to early 2004. This research is conducted not only in English but also in native-language sources—Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Tamil, and others—so that we can gather information not only from newspapers but also from products from the terrorist community. The terrorists are often quite proud of what they do in their local communities, and they produce albums and all kinds of other information that can be very helpful to understand suicide-terrorist attacks.

This wealth of information creates a new picture about what is motivating suicide terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism is not as closely associated with suicide terrorism as many people think. The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.

This is a Marxist group, a completely secular group that draws from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of the country. They invented the famous suicide vest for their suicide assassination of Rajiv Ghandi in May 1991. The Palestinians got the idea of the suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers.
...
RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign—over 95 percent of all the incidents—has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.

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[getmeouttahere]

1. It's quite simple, really...

if you have nothing, you have nothing to lose

[theboss]

15. Doesn't fit the profile

A fair number of suicide bombers are educated, middle class folks. The Saudis behind 9/11 had plenty.

[laststeamtrain]

2. "We're fighting them over there, so we can fight them over here"...

...is how Harry Shearer put it the other day at Hufpo when he referenced Papes' study.

I caught a bit of Papes on C-Span Sunday while I was warming up for the all-spin zone of listening to the back-to-back replays of the Sunday network talk shows. He seemed to be a dispassionate searcher for the truth without an partisan ax to grind.
Interview here:http://www.amconmag.com/2005_07_18/article.html

[Caoimhe]

3. great article!

Too bad most Bush supporters will never read it. To get out of Iraq we will need true Conservatives to step up WITH US and say enough is enough with the lying and the half-truths. We aren't fighting terrorism, we are creating it.

[Pystoff]

6. Yes very good

The American Conservative mag is what you'd call classic conservative. Yes every once in awhile you get the usuall conservative gasbag BS but for the mostpart it is a good read. I've considered getting a subscription for my GF's dad who voted for BushCo twice. Maybe it might reel his mind back in to reality. If someone is a conservative and that's it they'd do themselves a big favour by reading this publication instead of beliving Faux news or radio windbags.

You know things are messed up when even Buchanan hates the neo-cons and calls them by name.

[Emendator]

10. Well said

It is a good magazine. Buchanan has been opposing the neocons for many years. And Justin Raimondo, almost on his own, has made the term neocon a perjorative.

[sinkingfeeling]

4. Already posted last week..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=139771

[rodeodance]

5. should be mandatory summer reading for Jr and his pals!!

[bemildred]

7. Previous discussion:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=124&topic_id=92979

[bemildred]

8. And this one:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1522605#1522919

[Payne]

9. Some of the bigots over at Free Republic need to read this.

[Igel]

11. I know when I see a British-born citizen of Pakistani descent

killing himself in defense of his homeland--Palestine--I find Pape's argument convincing.

Or when a Libyan is arrested in Iraq fighting to end the occupation of his homeland.

Or Sa'udis in Afghanistan fighting for the liberation of their homeland.

Or Moroccans in Spain fighting for the liberation of Iraq, their homeland.

Then I ask, what is the meaning of 'homeland'? 'Occupation' is clear, but what makes a Libyan regard Iraq, a Sa'udi regard Afghanistan, or a Pakistani-Brit regard Palestine, as his homeland?

Ethnicity and language fail; where your genes or your ancestors' genes tooled around doesn't seem to work. I can't make social class or politics, per se, work.

Gee, what am I missing here?

[K-W]

14. The same reason Americans support a military reply to the London attack nt

[Igel]

16. Which I see amply supported on all sides, of course.

I find Pape's analysis highlihghts a factor that is likely to be necessary, but certainly not likely to be sufficient, while it seems to me that most people want to declare it to be sufficient.

[K-W]

17. Im not sure what you mean. EOM

[Larkspur]

12. Thanks for posting this. I will use it in response to an editorial in

today's The Day, an Eastern CT newspaper. The editorial -- Muslims Must Speak Out http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=41C0AE20-3E16-47A3-9D9C-A44693073838 -- asked Muslim leaders to publicly denounce suicide bombers.

[K-W]

13. Heres a link

This thread links to a rebuttal of Thomas Friedman making a similar argument.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4142306&mesg_id=4142306

[Larkspur]

18. Thanks.