May 23, 2007

HE EVEN INVOKES DARWINISM CORRECTLY:

VIDEO: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, with Robert A. Pape (Harry Kreisler, Conversations with History)

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes political scientist Robert A. Pape for a discussion of how social science can help us understand suicide terrorism. Professor Pape also reflects on international relations theory and its implications for foreign policy. Series: "Conversations with History"


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What Makes Suicide Bombers Tick?: A new report provides essential info for filtering fact from fantasy. The President would be wise to study its conclusions closely (Stan Crock, 7/06/05, Business Week)

"The presumed connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism is misleading and may be encouraging domestic and foreign policies likely to worsen America's situation and to harm many Muslims needlessly," he writes. Here's a summary of his analysis, which is based on the 315 suicide terrorist attacks from 1980 to 2003:

Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, a Marxist-Leninist Hindu group opposed to religion, committed the largest number of suicide attacks, 76. The Kurdish PKK, which used the tactic 14 times, is headed by a secular Marxist-Leninist, Abdulah Ocalan. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, another Marxist-Leninist group, and the al-Aqsa Brigade, which has ties to the socialist Fatah movement, account for a third of the attacks against Israel. Communist and socialist groups account for 75% of the attacks in Lebanon. Islamic fundamentalists, he concludes, were associated with about only half of the attacks from 1980 to 2003. And such fundamentalist Islamic countries as Iran and Sudan aren't producing any suicide bombers.

Pape argues that the common denominator among the bombers in 95% of the cases is that they're nationalist insurgents with a secular, strategic goal: ousting the military forces of democratic countries from land the insurgents believe is theirs. The suicide terrorists, who account for about 5% of all terrorist incidents but about 75% of all fatalities, believe their land and way of life are threatened. The religions of the occupier and the insurgents invariably are different, Pape notes, but he contends that difference is merely a useful recruiting tool and isn't at the root of the animosity.


Posted by Orrin Judd at May 23, 2007 12:00 AM
Comments

I'm a bit young but I don't seem to remember any IRA suicide terrorism.

Posted by: Chris B at May 23, 2007 7:59 AM

Which is why they lost. Mere homicide bombers are sissies.

Posted by: oj at May 23, 2007 10:54 AM

This is too silly to take seriously. Much like the way the NYT pretended that there was absolutely nothing, nada, zilch to possibly explain what might have motivated the Fort Dix plotters a couple of weeks back.

"Islamic fundamentalists, he concludes, were associated with about only half of the attacks from 1980 to 2003."

"Pape argues that the common denominator among the bombers in 95% of the cases is that they're nationalist insurgents with a secular, strategic goal"

And how exactly are these two statements reconcilable?


Posted by: b at May 23, 2007 11:27 AM

The goal of Islamicist bombing can be nationalist. Bombing won't make Palestine Islamicist, but will drive Israel out.

Posted by: oj at May 23, 2007 1:23 PM

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong...(I would keep typing "wrong" until my fingers fell off, but you get the point.)

That's the same fallacy that the left has that because they hate America and think that they have good reasons for doing so, and folks like Osama hate America, that they also must have good reasons (even the same ones) for doing so.

One didn't have to be an Islamicist in Iran to desire the overthrow of the Shah (there were plenty of Communists active in Iran in the 1970s) but Khomeini and his mad mullahs were driven by religion, period.

Posted by: b at May 23, 2007 1:39 PM

The Khomeinists didn't use suicide bombings. There was no occuppier to drive out.

Posted by: oj at May 23, 2007 5:05 PM
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