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.
Further proof that Libertarians, just like the Utopians of the far left, believe that people will do irrational things (like blowing themselves up) for rational motives.
That, IMHO, is not rational.
I know. I had seen this a long time ago but recently I saw it animated and I couldn't pass it up! :-)
muzzies will find whatever reasons that they want to hate us... they have ALWAYS hated us... and never in modern history can anyone point to a time that they liked us. End of story!
LLS
Why is this news? Why is this on my screen? I've been hearing this from "unbiased" media sources for five years. Why is rhetoric being thrown up like it's fresh and insightful?
This should have had a "Power Puke" alert...
"Today's national security debates (unlike those of the Cold War) require that we understand and address the religious and cultural motivations of those who feel compelled to destroy us."
Well said.
Which is to say, I do not believe that Cato has changed, so much as our immediate problems have changed, so that the areas where conservatives and "libertarians" agree have become less important, and the areas where we differ have become more so.
Pape doesn't seem to notice that Al Qaeda propagandists consider the territory of Israel, "Andalusia" (southern Spain), the Balkans, northern India, etc. to be their birthright as Muslims. We'd have to not only withdraw all forces from the ME but "persuade" (yeah, right), those other countries to commit suicide..... even then, even if we would and could do such idiotic and immoral moves, we wouldn't begin to end the threat because AQ does in fact seek world domination in stages. Such massive appeasement, even if it were possible (and it's not, for obvious reasons) would only embolden such scum to think that their homicide/suicide methods were the way to bring the "religion of peace" to dominance everywhere in the world.
Professor Pape is remarkably ignorant and naive, despite his supposed academic credentials and studies of Al Qaeda.
If that was not the case then there would have been no statisitcal difference from pre and post invasion Iraq. Whether or not we agree with it, the perception in the Arab world is that we're a foriegn invading army, and that propaganda is what's used to induce new recruits. Otherwise, we'd be seeing suicide bombers in places other than Iraq.
Before Iraq, the only experience the U.S. had with suicide bmobers was every couple of years. Now we get it daily, and only in Iraq. That's significant, and the cause is obvious. How to handle it is more complicated, of course, but before we can fix a problem we need to figure out what causes it.
What would you suggest threatening a suicide bomber with?
So what were we in occupying in 1979?
I may or may not be a good reason, but you can't persuade someone to kill himself and others for no reason. It may be irrational by our standards, but dismissing it as incomprehensible insanity makes it impossible for us to combat it.
"So what were we in occupying in 1979?"
Which act of suicide terrorism are you referring to happening in 1979?
So what were we in occupying in 1979?
1. See above
2. What Americans got suicide bombed in 1979?
That something unpleasant happen to his entire extended family. Then families would watch for symptoms of a member thinking of becoming a suicide bomber, and take him down first
Good luck getting that through Congress. They won't even sign off on the locker room towel snap for terror masterminds.
Pulling out completely is the worst possible option. The problem is that our presence is currently too large, and presents too much propaganda value without enough security added to make it worthwhile.
Wheras more troops would have been better to prevent this problem, now that we're in it, we need less. A smaller signature is better for counterinsurgency. Right now, the narrative in Iraq is "American troops battling Arab resistance". We need to take ourselves out of the narrative, and put an Iraqi face in it's place.
We can do that by making this a Special Forces mission instead of a conventional army one, and letting SOCOM run the show. And let them run it the right way, as an unconventional warfare asset that builds local forces up and does so in a way that's culturally sensitive. If we leave the patrolling up to the Iraqis, keep the American presence hidden from public view, and crank out Iraqi police and military units full time, we'll move off the radar, from a propaganda standpoint. Our air power and special operations guys will keep the advantage on the side of the government, until they're more matured.
A total retreat will simply tell the Arab world that suicide bombing works. This would tell them that it was for nothing.
MEMRI.org - Special Dispatch Series - No. 1111: Palestinian Legislative Council Member 'Umm Nidal' on Saudi Iqra TV: A Muslim Mother Should Raise Her Children for Jihad Interviewer Iqra TV Director-General Critical of Arab TV Channels That Don't Support Martyrdom Operations" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "The following are excerpts from an interview with Palestinian Legislative Council member "Umm Nidal" Farhat, aired on Saudi Iqra TV, on February 19, 2006. TO VIEW THIS CLIP, VISIT: http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1066" (March 10, 2006)
FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE.com: "CONVERTS TO TERROR" by Daniel Pipes (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Islamist terror organizations particularly prize converts. They know the local culture and blend in.") (December 6, 2005)
MEMRI.org - Special Dispatch Series No. 1032: "REFORMIST SAUDI AUTHOR: RELIGIOUS CASSETTES ADVOCATED JIHAD BY EMPHASIZING MARTYR'S SEXUAL REWARDS" (November 23, 2005)
MEMRI.org - Special Dispatch Series - No. 983: "COMMANDER OF HAMAS MILITARY WING WOMEN'S UNIT: 'Our Members Yearn for Martyrdom'" (September 9, 2005)
CORRIERE.IT/english: Turin - "TURIN IMAM DEPORTED -- "HE'S DANGEROUS" Accused of praising Bin Laden. Como-based Tunisian activist also expelled." (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "The ten children taking part in the ring-o'-roses protest beneath the market clock in Porta Palazzo were all wearing suicide bomber belts. The year was 1997, and that was the first time Bouriqi Bouchta, whose idea it was, attracted Italy’s attention.") (September 7, 2005)
MEMRITV.org/Transcript - Video Clip No. 838 - 8/31/2005: " 8/31/2005 Clip No. 838: "Sheik of Al-Azhar Muhammad Tantawi Explains on Al-Hurra TV When a Suicide Bomber Becomes a Martyr and When He Is Not" (TRANSCRIPT SNIPPET: "Following are excerpts from an interview with Sheik of Al-Azhar Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, which aired on Al-Hurra TV on August 31, 2005")
MEMRI TV.org - Clip No. 843 - Transcript: "SAUDI IQRA TV RAISES MONEY FOR PALESTINIAN INTIFADA" (TRANSCRIPT SNIPPET: "Caption: The Saudi committee for support of the Al-Quds Intifada. Account number 98, a joint account in all Saudi banks.") (August 29, 2005)
MEMRI.org - Special Dispatch Series - No. 909: "BAHRAINI AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST: THE PROPONENTS OF THE SUICIDE IDEOLOGY HAVE TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "In an article that appeared in the Saudi daily Al-Yawm, titled "The Globalization of Islamic Suicide" author and journalist Sawsan Al-Sha'er wrote that the extremist Islamist groups are taking advantage of global communications to recruit suicide bombers, and predicted the spread of the suicide bomber phenomenon to Britain as well.") (May 17, 2005)
MEMRI.org - MIDDLE EAST MEDIA RESEARCH INSTITUTE Special Report - No.32: "MEMRI TV Project Special Report: Arab and Iranian TV Clips in Support of Suicide Bombing" (September 1, 2004)
JIHAD WATCH.org: "RATIONAL, EDUCATED AND PROSPEROUS: JUST YOUR AVERAGE SUICIDE BOMBER" (May 15, 2004)
SAAG.org - SOUTH ASIA ANALYSIS GROUP: "SUICIDE & SUICIDAL TERRORISM" by B. Raman (March 12, 2004)
JIHAD WATCH.org (HAARETZ): "10 SUICIDE BOMBINGS FOILED OVER PASSOVER HOLIDAY" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "One of two Tanzim activists caught at the end of March told interrogators the group that sent them had planned a series of other attacks, including one with a device to which blood infected with AIDS would be attached.") (April 13, 2004)FrontPageMagazine.com: "AFFLUENT GENOCIDE" by Robert Spencer (October 14, 2003)
NEW SCIENTIST.com: "SUICIDE BOMBERS MAY SPREAD DISEASE" (July 24, 2002)
WTVT.com - FOX13 Investigative: "JIHAD FOR KIDS" (February 4, 2002)
Uh, I don't think so. If anything, at least speaking in terms of terrorism in general, it appears to be a result of DEoccupation. Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai, their offer under Oslo final status negotiations of withdrawal from 95 percent of the West Bank, their full withdrawal from Lebanon, their full withdrawal from Gaza, and the election of the new centrist government which campaigned on plans to "disengage" from most of the West Bank as well... All of these things STIMULATED terrorism against Israel. Likewise the withdrawal of American troops and assets from Saudia Arabia, supposedly UBL's number one complaint, has had no effect on al Qaeda's hostility toward America.
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