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.
Again...it seems very important to you that your interpetation is the valid one. Use Emperor, use Czar, use head coach... use what every word you want. I understand what you mean. I got it the first time you posted to me. After all English is my mother tongue. :)
You and I aren't that far apart. But your posts remind me of a prof I had. He could only accept the answer if it was written in certain terminology. You could say the same thing in a different way...but he was looking for those key words. I don't want to play that game with you. I have better things to do.
But your posts are finely written and should be read by all who are trying to understand the conflict.
Life in prison, with Hitlery Clinton and Helen Thomas as cellmates.
I'd be cutting my bedsheet into a noose within the first 15 minutes.
Claire actually hit upon a key weakness of the tactic earlier. These guys are generally losers who want to die as heroes, and their society by and large backs them up. If we can change this tactic into something that is seen to hurt Muslims, and not help, then we may have a real deterrent angle to pursue. We tend to suck at PR, but now's the time get that act together.
While withdrawing from Arabia would pretty much collapse the suicide bombing cycle, that action would hurt our strategic interests more than we would gain. There are many other considerations, like Iran, for instance, that merit our continued presence.
In the end, Islam will triumph or perish. It cannot co-exist with the infidel.
You're right, Duke, and you hit the absolute core issue. Think about the 9/11 hijackers, and their mindset. They launched 9/11 because Islam, as a social and political way of life, has completely lost it's centuries old battle with the West, and is beginning to perish.
It's a desperate, reactionary move on the part of people who see their entire way of life disappearing within the next hundred years, unless the tide can be changed. They don't use suicide attacks because they're winning, they do it because they're in danger of being culturally annihilated.
A war between civilizations is a smart move on bin Laden's part, because fear of change and anti-American hatred will help slow the decay and buy them some time. Our invasion of Iraq was a brilliant move, because we're shaking the dead tree, and helping to force it's collapse sooner. Either way, militant Islam is mobilizing for it's final fight, but one that even bin Laden states will require the intervention of Allah for them to win.
How we choose to deal with the suicide bomber issue is a seperate issue entirely, and should be based on rational assessments of American foriegn interests. But before we can deal with it, we need to know what it is, what conditions cause it to thrive and what can be used to reduce it.
Fair enough, FRiend. You're a good sport for putting up with me as long as you did. ;-)
It was easy... I read your posts on the thread... you have good scholarship. You are an asset to Free Republic.
The problem is that the PR is only effective against our own society. The PR manipulators are the MSM which we know are already allied with the enemy. We need to provide the type of PR persuasion that is effective against the enemy.
They are fighting because they believe for the first time since the Ottoman Empire fell, they can win the war. That was the lesson learned in Afghanistan in the 1980's.
Islam has suffered centuries of retreat and defeat. Their territory has decreased and they were no longer following Islam's mandate to "take over the world."
So, starting with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (and a little before that), they saw that the fault lied with them. If Islam was on the retreat, it was only because Islam had been compromised and Muslims were living in apostasy.
They returned to a simpler form of Islam. Returned "back to the book" so to speak. (Just like when Christians say we have to return to the Bible to solve our ills)...and it was a return "back to the book" that caused this explosion in Jihad that started during the Mandate period.
So what we are seeing was not started as a desperate fight for survival, but as a religious revival (let me use Christian terminology again)... and it is that revival that is the root cause of what we are witnessing today.
The Kamakazi attacks by the Japanese Empire were a similar effort, born out of desperation. As George Santayana once said, "Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
RE, "We tend to suck at PR, but now's the time get that act together." What would you think about outsourcing that to Madison avenue? Like a lot of other things, when government tries to do things, it cannot match the expertise of private effort. To say that we suck at PR is funny. We invented it. The government sucks because they don't have to compete in the bidding wars that produce the ads for superbowl Sunday.
A good observation. In fact, it's both.
As I mentioned earlier, al-Qa'ida is a political organization masquerading as a religious one. Islamic scholarship and philosophy is important to al-Qa'ida, but ultimately, they're about changing the here and now, not debating points of theology.
Islam is not merely a religion or a form of government. It is, strictly speaking, a cult(ure) that manages both the spiritual and the temporal. The rise of Western military and economic power over the last several hundred years was unfortunate, but it never threatened Islam culturally. Islam is simply too insular to be affected by such things. Western power simply meant that the non-Islamic barbarians were too powerful to for the Arabs to continue enlightening them. Even when Islamic lands were conquered, the colonization efforts never took more than a superficial root.
That changed over the last century or so.
The Middle East had fallen so far behind that even the inadvertent changes they absorbed were starting to change their culture. Mass media showed the Arabs how backwards they really were. Easy travel and telecommunications brought the outside world to their doorstep. Military defeats, not by massive Western armies, but by a handful of Jews (who were then seen by Arabs not as powerful and menacing, but as the butt of jokes), paraded their weakness in front of the world.
In short, Islam's claim to be the end all be all of human advancement was shown to be wrong on all counts. Western ideas penetrated the region. Syrian socialism, Iraqi secularism, Egyptian nationalism, Bahrain's Las Vegas like atmosphere, everywhere was seeking aspects of Western culture they liked, and trying to install them instead of Islam. On an individual level, Iranian girls own miniskirts, guys listen to rock music, and everyone parties in private. Sure, the people were Muslim, and believed in Allah, but Islam as the dominant guiding principal of daily Arab life was being discarded on every level. Deep fault lines emerged in what was once a monolithic entity.
Now, you can't just toss aside a cult like that and not expect consequences. It is, at it's core, a lifestyle mandated by Allah. Hardliners realized the threat that this corruption posed, and have launched the revivals you're talking about. No doubt about it, the retrograde, 8th century idealistic Islam is making a comeback.
The comeback is at hand because they're mobilizing in the face of a threat. Islam is always in a state of conflict when it borders a non-Islamic nation. Still, what's going on now is almost a frenzied response, like someone who is flailing because a garrote was slipped over their neck. Western ideas and technology threaten to suffocate traditional Islam in a way that wasn't possible before, and that has given rise to the militant, reactionary response we see now.
You suggestion is probably the most effective method I've heard yet. Get the professional ad industry into launching a campaign on the negative impacts of suicide attacks on Muslims, and denoucing. Even if we paid top dollar for the ads, it would be the best tax money we ever spent.
When I say 'we are bad at PR', I mean the government. Our efforts in Iraq have been clumsy and ineffective. Were we to mobilize the first stringers and make some sophisticated, top notch media campaigns, we'd make some progress in getting that message out.
Thanks. I don't think Foggy Bottom will ever be able to match Madison Avenue.
Okay back to your post...
Yes, Islam has been retreating since the Westphalia Treaty and the rise of nation states in the West. At first, it was unconcerned. It had been turned back, but it could live with it. After all, it had Istanbul. Vienna would have been nice...but...
Then something very upsetting happened. The French invaded Egypt. And there was nothing the Muslims could to about it. It took the British to get the French out, but the British didn't go away...they stayed... and now we have a problem.
At first the answer wasn't Islam. It was Arab Nationalism. And Arab Nationalism was the key up until the First Gulf War.
Along side Arab Nationalism was Islamic fundamentalism. Not as strong, but there. This was the return to that I mentioned in my last post.The Muslims looked around and said... hey, this humiliation is the judgment of Allah on the way we live, and how we believe. We aren't doing the will of Allah because we aren't fighting jihad.
The moderate Arab leaders tried to tell the Reagan administration that they creating a monster by their support of the muhjahadeen. Why? Because it was the same monster they were fighting. But, now flushed with victory and armed with fighters and money... the threat that started with the Egyptian Brotherhood blossomed into other organizations backed by states.
When Iraq was defeated in the Gulf War... Arab nationalism was discarded as the means to reestablish Arab dominance and fundamentalism was embraced. Not in desperation, but as revelation... see, here is the answer to not only the corruption in our lives but to why we are humiliated by the West.
The Fundamentalist believe the West is corrupt and dying. But, the west, through culture and politics and economics has invaded the Middle East on all fronts It's like you said... this is an affront.
So the fight is being waged against two enemies. Against the West and against the corrupt leadership in Middle East countries that allow the pollution from the West to continue. This is the religious component. If we are to be what Allah said, then here's what we need to do.
The Qu'ran says... and we get jihad - a political blueprint to take over the world. Now, I said that like the Brain would say it to Pinkey...but bottom line: Islam is to dominate not be dominated (politically, religiously, culturally, economically, etc)... And Afghanistan showed the terrorists that they could win against one of the vanguards of the "West". Now, they believe they can win against the other.
That is only true in the sense that we are in Dar-al-Harb. To the radical Muslim, we are all living in lands yet-to-be conquered. Not a single American could set foot in the Middle East ever again, and the terrorists would still strike us. The reason is that they are commanded to convert all of the world into Dar-al-Islam. Your mistake is in assuming the territory that the Muslims feel threatened in is in the Middle East. The territory that they feel threatened in is ours. Even were the Middle East to be totally converted to Taliban-type rule, relieving the "threat" to Islam there, the moment Islam stops spreading into our lands, they would feel threatened.
Japan's conversion to suicide attacks started when the circumstances changed to the point where they though they were losing the war. That was only partially (a very small part) about the land they occupied. It was far more about their feeling of helplessness as the resources they felt they needed to win (men, materiel, supplies) were being depleted. Likewise, even were we not in Iraq at all, the moment that Islam stopped expanding (as it is commanded to do), the attacks would increase. Iraq simply reveses the religious expansion, not the territorial one. American is not annexing Iraq; we are making sure that Islamic fundamentalism cannot take hold there. And it is the defeat of the ideology, not the loss or capture of land, that has them suicide bombing us...
On possible reason Cato tends to focus on economic liberty, I suppose...
That's one flaw in Pape's theory. What's an entire country supposed to do, just give up and become a diaspora?
This is certainly true. There appears to be no distinction at all between the function of the state and the clerical authorities. Radical Islam is inherently authoritarian.
Thank you very much. If we extrapolate the philosophical assumptions, world domination is what we end with.
The snake in the grass Cato Institute, shows itself in this foolish article. - tom
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