INDEED, WHILE YOU'D HARDLY CALL IT AN OCCUPATION...:

What triggers the suicide bomber : Foreign occupation, not religious fervor, is the primary motivation behind this form of terrorism. (Robert Pape, October 22, 2010, LA Times)

Research I and my colleagues conducted at the University of Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, in which we analyzed each of the more than 2,200 suicide attacks that have taken place throughout the world since 1980, shows that though other factors matter, the primary driver of suicide terrorism is foreign occupation.

In Lebanon, for example, of the 32 successful suicide attackers from 1982 through 1989 whose ideology was identifiable, 22 were communists and socialists with no commitment to religious extremism; five were Christian. Religion served as an auxiliary recruiting tool, but the root cause of the attacks was foreign occupation, and the attacks were designed to coerce the occupying forces — Israel, France and the United States — to withdraw.

The United States has not learned the lessons from Lebanon and is failing to realize that prolonged troop deployments abroad are leading to an increase in suicide attacks and violence against troops and civilians.

What we should be doing is asking whether our military presence in Afghanistan and continued campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan are making us safer. Unfortunately, our research suggests just the opposite.

A more effective approach would be to revert to a policy of working with local governments and institutions and selectively using air power and special forces to accomplish important military objectives. This is an intermediate approach that is neither "cutting and running" nor "staying and dying." It is a way to achieve political objectives without subjecting U.S. forces to unnecessary harm and without further inflaming local passions that in turn lead to a rise of hatred and violence against an occupying power.

Many worry that shifting to such a policy would embolden the terrorists. However, Hezbollah suicide attackers did not follow the Americans to New York, or the French to Paris or even the Israelis to Tel Aviv after those nations left Lebanon. Since the last Israeli ground forces left in May 2000, there has not been a single Hezbollah suicide attack, not even in the summer of 2006, during the three-week air war between Israel and Hezbollah. To be sure, ordinary terrorism has continued, but causing far fewer deaths than suicide attacks.

...the fact is we did withdraw all our forces from Saudi Arabia after 9-11.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 22, 2010 3:15 PM