(thanks to Neandernews and Maggies Farm)
Posted on 09/27/2006 12:38:22 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Robert A. Pape is professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the author of the forthcoming Cato Institute paper "Suicide Terrorism and Democracy: What We've Learned since 9/11."
The attacks of September 11th, 2001 brought us face to face with the horror of suicide terrorism. In the years since, pundits have painted al Qaeda as a fearless enemy motivated by insatiable religious hatred. Amid prognostications of doom, we lost sight of the truth: that suicide terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy, and that beneath the religious rhetoric with which it is perpetrated, it occurs largely in the service of secular aims. Suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation rather than a product of Islamic fundamentalism.
Al Qaeda is a paradoxical entity: a group with territorial concerns but no territory of its own. It came about in response to the presence of thousands of American troops on the Arabian Peninsula after 1990, and recruited terrorists for suicide missions with the primary aim of forcing them out. Though it speaks of Americans as infidels, al Qaeda is less concerned with converting us to Islam than removing us from Arab and Muslim lands, and it was in this cause that it attacked our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, and the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11.
Above all, Al Qaeda seeks to coerce democratic governments into changing their foreign policies. Since 2001, it has achieved a significant degree of success in dividing the West, by concentrating on vulnerable U.S. allies like France, Germany and Turkey, attacking tourists and foreign workers from north Africa to Indonesia.
There is no better way to understand the enemy than to listen to how it recruits new suicide bombers to kill us. In July, Al Qaeda released its most recent recruitment video, encouraging Muslims to carry out new attacks similar to the July 7 bombings in London last year. The video is stunning in its absence of religious declamation.
The first speaker is Shehzad Tanweer, one of the actual 7/7 bombers, who explains that he intended to punish "the non-Muslims of Britain" because "your government has openly supported the genocide of over 15,000 innocent Muslims in Fallujah," the site of a major Western military operation in Iraq in 2004.
The second speaker is Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's second in command, who reiterates that "Shehzad's motivation was the repression which the British are perpetrating in Iraq" and other Muslim countries.
Finally, the main event: Adam Gadahn, a 28-year old American citizen, born of Jewish and Christian parents, who converted to Islam as a teenager and has lived with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 1998. Gadahn is the new voice -- and new weapon -- of Al Qaeda. In his long recruitment appeal, he never mentions 72 virgins or the benefits Islamic martyrs receive in Heaven. Instead, he speaks to an earthly motive: revenge for Western military atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I know [Western combat forces] killed and maimed civilians in their strikes because I've seen it with my own eyes ... I've carried the victims in my arms: women, children, toddlers, babies in their mother's wombs," Gadahn says. "When we bomb their cities and civilians like they bomb ours, or destroy their infrastructure and means of transportation like they destroy ours ... they should blame no one but themselves. Because they are the ones who started this dirty war and they are the ones who will end it ... by pulling out of our region and keeping their hands out of our affairs."
To make sense of Al Qaeda's campaign against the United States and its allies, I compiled data on the 71 terrorists who took their own lives carrying out attacks sponsored by Osama bin Laden's network between 1995 and 2004. These men are drawn from two groups: those who feel harmed and humiliated by foreign military occupation, and those who identify with the plight of a kindred ethnic group under foreign occupation.
Although British authorities thwarted last month's airliner attack plot, the arrest and detention of two dozen individuals in the U.K. reveals that Al Qaeda continues to draw strength from disaffected European Muslims, whose anger over Western combat operations in Muslim lands motivates them to take up arms. If it could no longer draw recruits from the Muslim countries where there is an American and Western combat presence, however, the remaining transnational network would pose a far smaller threat.
From 2002 to the end of 2005, Al Qaeda carried out over 17 suicide and other terrorist bombings, killing nearly 700 people – more attacks and victims than in all the years before 9/11 combined. Most Americans would like to believe that Western counter-terrorism efforts have weakened al Qaeda, but by the measure that counts – the ability of the group to kill us – it is stronger today than it was before 9/11.
We must understand that suicide terrorism results more from foreign occupation than Islamic fundamentalism, and conduct the war accordingly.
This article appeared in the Chicago Tribune on September 11, 2006.
PING!
Further proof(imho) of Cato's slide to the left.
And having this column published on September 11 was not a bright move on the Chicago Tribune's part, IMO.
Pure BS.
Be very, very careful what you ask for, Adam. We are quite capable, should we be pushed too far, of turning this around and doing just that to you. But first we'd have to unite and free up our own rear of domestic enemies, and I doubt that's happening anytime soon.
}:-)4
Never forget that there is one upside to suicide bombing: it's one less of them that we have to figure out how to do away with.
And, extending the metaphor of the 'Roe Effect', if they do it long enough they're gonna run out of volunteers
That said, it has been my contention since 911 that the way to deal with this problem is to find out who is behind this, and mercilessly punish them, their friends, family-- in short anyone whose life they came in contact with would be called fair game.
It would stop this dead in its tracks
"Libertarianism" is inherently atheistic, materialistic, and isolationist. This is not a new development, but rather is the foundation upon which "libertarianism" is built. "Libertarians" (just as Marxists) will always try to convince us to ignore all aspects of human nature other than material acquisitiveness. God tells us otherwise. I'm going to side with God on this one.
It is academic what causes it. We will impress on them the advisability of cutting that sh** out.
Unfortunately, that "occupation" appears to include the entire nation of Israel. A nation of Jews. The sucide bombers seem to hate Jews.
But, why is their foreign occupation of their lands? It goes something like this: We're doing business over there with some dictator. Some dissident group is mad at us for, in effect, supporting the dictator by dealing with him. Because, the US must protect its interest, troops are sent. The dissidents then claim occupation is occuring.
The US, in the past, didn't care and only dealt with the dictatorial regime (as awkward as that was). However, as 9/11 showed us, that didn't prevent anything. The other plan would be to kick out the dictators and let the people decided. We can all see what's going on in Iraq, can't we?
the bottom line is those Middle Eastern Countries are basket cases because of them, not us. The other bottom line is we have to deal with them...like it or not.
The west is in a very dicey situation. Deal with the dictators and we're wrong. Implement democracy and we're wrong. In a situation like this, I choose the side of freedom and the overthrow of dictators everywhere.
The better question is, what we've learned about the Cato Institute since 9/11.
"The better question is, what we've learned about the Cato Institute since 9/11."
My thoughts exactly!
Robert Pape has little or no understanding of jihad.
"how do the millions killed in the sudan and other areas by muslims figure into this???"
I don't think that there is a great deal of use of suicide bombings in the Sudan at all.
Cato was a great organization at one time(imho). They were one of the first policy groups in Washington that was not run by leftist elitists and they sided with the Reagan Administration on most of his policy issues.
Since 911,they have changed dramatically for the worse.
heh heh! I was waiting for this to show up but sure wasn't expecting the animation! LOL
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