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Actually the author has a lot of profound things to say and is becoming very influential on the subject of the origins of terrorism. It's high time that we started rethinking what were doing in Iraq and now in Afghanistan which is also turning sour.

Professor Pape says that the attack on the World Trade Center came because of our presence in the Arabian Peninsula, contrary to what some posters believe.

The suicide bombers have a well thought out plan. First is to divide the Muslim world from the West and then to break up the west. When America's isolated it can be attacked. Therefore our sacrifices in Iraq has done nothing to forestall an attack on the homeland. Such an attack has not occurred because it is not convenient for the enemy.

So far everything we are doing in the Iraq war plays into that plan and advances it. Nothing are doing there prevents an attack on our homeland. Those attacks will come in due course after America is diplomatically isolated.

He has not advised cutting and running but he wants to move a mobile force offshore on carriers ready to move into any area in the Middle East. He notes with approval our policy of establishing low-profile bases in Saudi Arabia which can be used to supply our troops as they enter a theater.

I suggest you take a look at this article which appears in the current issue of the American conservative the introduction to which is as follows:

http://www.amconmag.com/2005_07_18/article.html

July 18, 2005 Issue

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.