Suicide bombers

The world's leading expert on suicide bombers has apparently analysed over 400 attacks in the last 25 years, and come to the conclusion that the motivating factor for the vast majority of them is not religious fanaticism, but a desire to drive out occupying forces - particularly Western troops based on the Arabian peninsula.

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1418817.htm

It seems to me that this is terribly inconvenient. Instead of blaming the problem on an irrational worldview that we can't be expected to do anything about, this suggests the problem is one that CAN be addressed... which in turn suggests it SHOULD be addressed.

Thoughts?

The choice seems to be pull out or dig in. People are throwing money at the situation.

Some interesting thoughts came up in this thread, if you can be bothered:

http://www.redhotpawn.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=26442

Edit: too tired to read right now, I hope your article will splash some cold water on my shrivelled brain.

The critical points of the article were these two, interrealated ones:

ROBERT PAPE: There's no question that Osama bin Laden himself appears to have goals beyond simply ejecting Western combat forces from the Arabian Peninsula. The real question is whether he would be able to use suicide attack to achieve those goals. We've seen in the case of Lebanon that other suicide terrorist groups, also with such goals, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, which also had the goal to create an Islamic state, and also used suicide terrorist attack to eject foreign combat forces from its territory. What we've seen is once those combat forces left, the terrorist group was not able to continue a suicide terrorist campaign. Once American forces left Lebanon, Hezbollah attackers did not follow us to New York. Once Israeli forces left Lebanon, Hezbollah suicide attackers did not follow Israel into Tel Aviv. Instead, what's happened over time is, Hezbollah has abandoned suicide attack and virtually abandoned terrorism itself and become, since the early 1990s, more or less a mainstream political party. It still has its goal of trying to pursue an Islamic fundamentalist state but it's not using suicide attack or really violence at all to achieve that end.

KERRY O'BRIEN: So what scope is there for growth in the recruitment of potential suicide terrorists and who are these people being recruited anyway?

ROBERT PAPE: Suicide terrorists are not mainly depressed, lonely individuals on the margins of society. I've studied 462 suicide terrorists from around the world since 1980. Few fit the standard stereotype of a depressed, lonely individual on the margins of society. Half of those 462 are secular and therefore not religious fanatics.

In fact, most suicide terrorists are socially integrated, productive members of their community like the London bombers. Most suicide terrorists, and this is true including those in Lebanon and Palestine, are working-class and middle-class like the London bombers. Most suicide terrorists are walk-in volunteers who are not long-time members of the terrorist organisation and, therefore, easy for intelligence services to track for years. Most suicide terrorists join the suicide terrorist group just a few months or even just a few weeks in order to do their very first act of violence - their own suicide terrorist attack.

For most suicide terrorists, they don't have evidence as the London bombers don't, that they hate Western values or that they hate being immersed in Western society. What we have evidence for time and again across the spectrum is that they are deeply angered by military policies, especially foreign combat troops on territory that they prize and that they believe they have no other means to change those policies.

To reiterate: 1) Suicide bombing is done by people who don't hate the West, per se, but do hate the presence of foreign troops on certain territories; AND
2) In those instances where troops were withdrawn, the suicide bombings ceased.

Originally posted by no1marauder
The critical points of the article were these two, interrealated ones:

ROBERT PAPE: There's no question that Osama bin Laden himself appears to have goals beyond simply ejecting Western combat forces from the Arabian ...[text shortened]... nstances where troops were withdrawn, the suicide bombings ceased.

Originally posted by wib
It appears that you have frightened the conservatives away No1. In that case I'll have to play devil's advocate and argue with you.

Let's see now, how do the neocons do it? Oh yeah, step 1 is to attack the source.

NeoCon Wib says: The guy who wrote that article is an idiot. He's obviously some panty waste liberal with an agenda. Terrorists hate u ...[text shortened]... ction of knowing that I've got all the answers.

NeoCon Wib says: Aaaaaaaahhhhhh...

Originally posted by no1marauder
Damn, every left-wing nut but me got to date Barbarella!😞

Originally posted by wib
Don't give up on that dream yet bro, there's still time. She's still got a little sumpin sumpin...

http://www.600.org/movie_stars/pictures/jane_fonda.jpg

Originally posted by orfeo
Judging by the shorts for Monster-In-Law, she doesn't have taste in comeback movies...

So this is what happens when the start of a thread is some good old-fahsioned empirical research? Should have known.

I dug a little further, and apparently the book says that the group that used suicide bombers the most was the Tamil Tigers. Who are Hindus!

OK, this lazy baboon has just read the article above...It's a wonderfully succinct piece. I challenge anyone who thinks the US presence in Iraq is a good idea to read it and gainsay it (Chancremechanic? Sasquatch? The Bloop?).

Here's the best bit (for me), but be sure to read the whole thing.


KERRY O'BRIEN: You say America and its allies continue to make fundamental errors in the way they read the strategic logic behind Al-Qaeda and associated terrorists. In what way?

ROBERT PAPE: There's a faulty premise in the current strategy on the war on terrorism. That faulty premise is that suicide terrorism and Al Qaeda suicide terrorism in particular is mainly driven by an evil ideology Islamic fundamentalism independent of other circumstances. However, the facts are that since 1980, suicide terrorist attacks from around the world over half have been secular. What over 95 per cent of suicide attacks around the world [are about] is not religion, but a specific strategic purpose - to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland or prize greatly and this is in fact a centrepiece of Al Qaeda's strategic logic, which is to compel the United States and Western countries to abandon military commitments on the Arabian Peninsula.

KERRY O'BRIEN: You say that September 11, Bali, Madrid and now the London bombings are not part of an Islamic fundamentalist attack on Western civilisation, Western decadence, yet the kind of hate literature that comes from Islamic extremists say exactly that, an attack on Western civilisation, Western democracy.

ROBERT PAPE: We have strong evidence to the contrary. The British Home Office just released a four-volume report that they conducted in 2004 - and you can find it on the London Times web site - that four-volume report is about attitudes in the British Muslim community.

There are 1.6 million Muslims in Britain. The Home Office found that 13 per cent of those Muslims believed that suicide attacks against the West were justified. They further found that the central reason for why those 13 per cent believed those suicide attacks were justified was anger over British military policies on the Arabian Peninsula. The link between anger over American, British and Western military forces stationed on the Arabian Peninsula and Al Qaeda's ability to recruit suicide terrorists to kill us couldn't be tighter.

13 per cent of 1.6 million is 208,000.
So 208,000 people in this country believe suicide bombingsa are justified. Reassuring that it's such a small and easily contained situation.