ROBERT A. PAPE: The End of Fear, The Beginning of Understanding

[Winehole23]

ROBERT A. PAPE: The End of Fear, The Beginning of Understanding

Posted on September 3, 2011 (http://cpost.uchicago.edu/blog/2011/09/03/robert-a-pape-the-end-of-fear-the-beginning-of-understanding/) by drovang (http://cpost.uchicago.edu/blog/author/drovang/)


CHICAGO – In the decade since 9/11, the United States has:

• Conquered and occupied two large Muslim countries (Afghanistan and Iraq)

• Compelled a huge Muslim army to root out a terrorist sanctuary (Pakistan)

• Deployed thousands of special forces to numerous Muslim countries (Yemen, Somalia, Sudan etc)

• Imprisoned hundreds of Muslims without recourse

• Waged a massive war of ideas involving Muslim clerics to denounce violence and new institutions to bring Western norms to Muslim countries

• Killed Osama bin Laden, the inspirational leader of Al Qaeda who carried out the 9/11 attacks.


Have these actions – which some have called, “World War IV” – made America safe?


In a narrow sense, America is safer and justice has been served. There has not been another attack on the scale of 9/11. Our defenses regarding immigration controls, airport security, and the disruption of potentially devastating domestic plots have all improved. This is the positive side of the ledger.


In a broader sense, however, America is not safe enough. Anti-American suicide terrorism rose rapidly around the world in the decade since September 11, 2001. In 2003, then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously asked, “Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?” As even a casual glance at the facts shows, the answer is a disappointing no. The negative side of the balance sheet is daunting.


September 11, 2001 was so devastating largely because it was a suicide attack in which 19 hijackers killed themselves in the course of killing 3,000 innocent people. So the key to tracking the threat is to focus on suicide terrorism, especially those inspired against Americans.


Look at the numbers. In 2000 – the year before 9/11 – there were 20 suicide attacks around the world and one – against the US Cole in Yemen – was anti-American inspired. By contrast, in 2010, there were well over 200 suicide attacks and about 90 percent were anti-American inspired – against US troops or those working with America – a ten-fold increase over the past decade.



Each month, there are more suicide terrorists trying to kill Americans and its allies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other Muslim countries than in all the years before 2001 combined. Yes, these attacks are mostly (although not exclusively) focused on military and diplomatic targets. However, so too were the anti-American suicide attacks before 2001. It is important to remember that the 1995 and 1996 bombings of US troops in Saudi Arabia, the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and (as mentioned) bombing of the US Cole in Yemen in 2000 were the crucial dots that showed the threat was rising prior to 9/11. Today, such dots are occurring by the dozens every month.



American military policies have not stopped the rising wave of extremism in the Muslim world. The reason has not been lack of effort, lack of will among the American people, lack of bipartisan support for aggressive military policies, lack of funding, or lack of genuine patriotism.


No. American military policies are not failing for the standard excuses. Something else is creating the mismatch between America’s effort and the results.



WHAT WENT WRONG

America has been waging a long war against terrorism, but without much serious public debate about what is truly motivating terrorists to kill us. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attack, this was perfectly understandable. If toppling the Taliban was necessary to take out Al Qaeda’s sanctuary in Afghanistan, so be it.



But, in an instant, there was also a great need to know, or perhaps better to say, to “understand” the events of that terrible day. A simple narrative was readily available and a powerful conventional wisdom began to exert its grip. Since the 9/11 hijackers were all Muslims, it was easy to presume that Islamic fundamentalism was the central motivating force driving the 19 hijackers to kill themselves in order to kill us. Within weeks after the attack, surveys of American attitudes show that this presumption was fast congealing into a hard reality in the public mind. Americans immediately wondered, “Why do they hate us?” and almost as immediately came to the conclusion that it was because of who we are, not what we do.


The narrative of Islamic fundamentalism did more than explain why America was attacked. It also pointed toward a simple, grand solution – one whose ambition only made it seem all the more worthy in light of the trauma of that terrible day. If Islamic fundamentalism was driving the threat and if its roots grew from the culture of the Arab world, then America had a clear mission: To transform Arab societies – with Western political institutions and social norms as the ultimate antidote to the virus of Islamic extremism.



The only problem: Islamic fundamentalism is not the main driver of suicide terrorism. What drives this phenomenon more than any other single factor is foreign military presence – which inspires wave after wave of individuals to join terrorist groups in order to carry out suicide attacks in the hope that these would end the foreign presence in their lands.



On September 11, 2001, the United States had deployed over 12,000 combat forces to countries on the Persian Gulf (5,000 in Saudi Arabia and 7,000 in other countries along the rim). We now know that these troops were the principle rallying cry of Osama bin Laden in his efforts to mobilize volunteers for suicide attacks against the United States and that the martyr videos of the 9/11 hijackers – their last video will testimonials – prominently justify their actions as in response to Western military control of the governments on the Arabian peninsula. Further, escalation of American combat forces in the region for the Iraq war directly fueled still further anti-American suicide terrorism.


Hence, the grand solution became the grand catalyst for more anti-American inspired suicide terrorism than ever before.
WHAT WE KNOW

Vast new research on suicide terrorism has produced important new knowledge. Here is a summary of what we know:


• Occupation Causes Suicide Terrorism

Over 95% of all suicide attacks are in response to foreign occupation
• The More Occupation, the More Suicide Terrorism

As America has occupied two large Muslim countries, Afghanistan and Iraq with a total population of about 60 million, total suicide attacks worldwide have risen dramatically — from about 300 from 1980 to 2003 to 2000+ from 2004 to 2010. Further, 90% of all suicide attacks are now anti-American.


• Indirect occupation is the equivalent of direct occupation
The US compelled Pakistan to deploy 100,000 troops against the Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Pakistani suicide attacks escalated dramatically.


• Ending Occupation can end suicide terrorism even without transforming Muslim countries

Since Israel withdrew its army from Lebanon in May 2000, there has not been a single Lebanese suicide attack. Since Israel withdrew from Gaza and large parts of the West Bank, Palestinian suicide attacks are down over 90%. Since America and its allies began withdrawing from Iraq, suicide attacks are also falling fast.


• Empowering local groups can reduce suicide terrorism
In Iraq, the surge’s apparent success was not the result of increased US military control of Anbar Province, but rather quite the reverse — the empowerment of Sunni tribal leaders for their own security, commonly called the Anbar Awakening.



• Taking power away from local groups can escalate suicide terrorism
In Afghanistan the ISAF’s expansion strategy, designed to exert more central government control over the Pashtun tribes in the Western and Southern provinces, caused a resurgence in the Taliban and an increase in the number of suicide attacks.


THE TIDE IS TURNING

The oxygen for America’s strategy is, fundamentally, how we understand the root cause of the terrorist threat we face. In recent years, the intellectual climate has begun to change. In January 2010, a Zogby poll found that 27% of Americans now believe that the “most important factor” motivating terrorists to attack the United States is that they “resent Western power and influence” compared to 33% who still think the main motive is “make Islam the world’s dominant religion.”



And American military policies are also changing. The United States started to draw down military forces from Iraq in 2008, has already removed 100,000 troops, and is on schedule to end its commitment of heavy combat forces there next year. Since their peak in 2007, suicide attacks in the country have fallen by over 80 percent and the country is more stable today than at any point since America conquered the country in 2003.
In Afghanistan, President Obama announced in July his plan to remove about a third of US forces from the country over the next year and to continue drawing down thereafter. If so, there is good reason to expect that suicide attacks will soon begin to decline significantly there as well.


Fortunately the US does not need to station large ground forces in either Iraq or Afghanistan to keep them from being a significant safe haven for Al Qaeda or any other anti-American terrorists. This can be achieved by a strategy called “Off-Shore Balancing” that relies on over-the-horizon air and naval forces and rapidly deployable ground forces, combined with empowering local groups to oppose the terrorist groups. No matter what happens in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US will maintain a significant air and naval presence in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean for many years, and those forces are well-suited to striking terrorist leaders and camps in conjunction with local militias – just as they did so successfully against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in 2001.



Above all, to truly move beyond the war on terror, it is important for scholars, policy intellectuals, government leaders, and the public at large to continue to educate themselves about the factors that lead to suicide attacks like 9/11. The more we know, the fewer mistakes and the better our policies – and the more we can all live our lives in peace.
http://cpost.uchicago.edu/blog/2011/09/03/robert-a-pape-the-end-of-fear-the-beginning-of-understanding/

[boutons_deux]

Not a single mention of the MIC's secret SOCOM murderers garrisoning the planet? the MIC has quit catching, imprisoning, torturing and started simply murdering (and of course they never murder the wrong person, never any collateral murders). SOCOM is creating the terrorists to keep itself in eternal business.


How many secret wars are we fighting?

U.S. special ops forces are being deployed in more and more nations -- and the public has no idea

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/08/04/secert_american_wars

[Winehole23]

http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/06/how-scared-of-terrorism-should

[boutons_deux]

Like the War On Drugs business, the Global War on Terrorism is a self-propagating business sucking $Ts out of taxpayer pockets for little or no benefit.

Both businesses buy plenty of Congress critters to keep those tax $Ts flowing.

[boutons_deux]

New CIA chief Petraeus pledges to defend America


http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/09/07/new-cia-chief-petraeus-pledges-to-defend-america/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

========

He'll request $10Bs more from taxpayers, and he'll get it. The CIA will never live down allowing 9/11.

[Spurminator]

Good article. Unfortunately, the reality Pape presents has been brought up by others before him, only to be squashed by anti-intellectuals as examples of "blaming America."

"They hate us for our freedom" is much easier for stupid people to get on board with.

[Winehole23]

The blaming America contingent seems to be biting their tongues here. That's a dramatic change from just a few years back.

[MannyIsGod]

I loved Robert Pape the moment I read Dying to Win. That book blows away so many of the myths surrounding suicide terrorism.

Very smart individual.

[MannyIsGod]

The oxygen for America’s strategy is, fundamentally, how we understand the root cause of the terrorist threat we face. In recent years, the intellectual climate has begun to change. In January 2010, a Zogby poll found that 27% of Americans now believe that the “most important factor” motivating terrorists to attack the United States is that they “resent Western power and influence” compared to 33% who still think the main motive is “make Islam the world’s dominant religion.”

Wow that is actually heartening.

[ElNono]

Good read. Thanks for posting. Another reason why you want to empower local rebels to do the bidding, instead of deploying ground troops.

[boutons_deux]

“resent Western power and influence” compared to 33% who still think the main motive is “make Islam the world’s dominant religion.”

I'd say both are wrong.

How about "they hate us" (as OBL said) because
American troops and companies are have invaded their countries, are occupying their lands, taking their resources, and murdering innocent civilians?

How would the NRA bubbas react if Mexico's drones were bombing drug cartel people (who dress and look just like Hispanic Americans) in USA and also killing 1000s of civilians?

[cantthinkofanything]

“resent Western power and influence” compared to 33% who still think the main motive is “make Islam the world’s dominant religion.”

I'd say both are wrong.

How about "they hate us" (as OBL said) because
American troops and companies are have invaded their countries, are occupying their lands, taking their resources, and murdering innocent civilians?

How would the NRA bubbas react if Mexico's drones were bombing drug cartel people (who dress and look just like Hispanic Americans) in USA and also killing 1000s of civilians?

Don't you think all the above fits under "resent Western power and influence"???

Do you even fucking read any of the posts in a thread? It seems like you just read the title and then post some bullshit filled with acronyms and catch phrases.

[DarrinS]

http://www.slate.com/id/2303013/

Simply Evil

A decade after 9/11, it remains the best description and most essential fact about al-Qaida.

By Christopher Hitchens




The proper task of the "public intellectual" might be conceived as the responsibility to introduce complexity into the argument: the reminder that things are very infrequently as simple as they can be made to seem. But what I learned in a highly indelible manner from the events and arguments of September 2001 was this: Never, ever ignore the obvious either. To the government and most of the people of the United States, it seemed that the country on 9/11 had been attacked in a particularly odious way (air piracy used to maximize civilian casualties) by a particularly odious group (a secretive and homicidal gang: part multinational corporation, part crime family) that was sworn to a medieval cult of death, a racist hatred of Jews, a religious frenzy against Hindus, Christians, Shia Muslims, and "unbelievers," and the restoration of a long-vanished and despotic empire.

To me, this remains the main point about al-Qaida and its surrogates. I do not believe, by stipulating it as the main point, that I try to oversimplify matters. I feel no need to show off or to think of something novel to say. Moreover, many of the attempts to introduce "complexity" into the picture strike me as half-baked obfuscations or distractions. These range from the irredeemably paranoid and contemptible efforts to pin responsibility for the attacks onto the Bush administration or the Jews, to the sometimes wearisome but not necessarily untrue insistence that Islamic peoples have suffered oppression. (Even when formally true, the latter must simply not be used as nonsequitur special pleading for the use of random violence by self-appointed Muslims.)

Underlying these and other attempts to change the subject there was, and still is, a perverse desire to say that the 9/11 atrocities were in some way deserved, or made historically more explicable, by the many crimes of past American foreign policy. Either that, or—to recall the contemporary comments of the "Reverends" Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson—a punishment from heaven for American sinfulness. (The two ways of thinking, one of them ostensibly "left" and the other "right," are in fact more or less identical.) That this was an assault upon our society, whatever its ostensible capitalist and militarist "targets," was again thought too obvious a point for a clever person to make. It became increasingly obvious, though, with every successive nihilistic attack on London, Madrid, Istanbul, Baghdad, and Bali. There was always some "intellectual," however, to argue in each case that the policy of Tony Blair, or George Bush, or the Spanish government, was the "root cause" of the broad-daylight slaughter of civilians. Responsibility, somehow, never lay squarely with the perpetrators.

So, although the official tone of this month's pious commemorations will stress the victims and their families (to the pathetically masochistic extent of continuing to forbid much of the graphic footage of the actual atrocities, lest "feelings" and susceptibilities be wounded), it is quite probable that those who accept the conventional "narrative" are, at least globally, in a minority. It is not only in the Muslim world that it is commonplace to hear that the events of 9/11 were part of a Jewish or U.S. government plot. And it is not only on the demented fringe that such fantasies circulate in "the West." A book alleging that the Pentagon rocketed the Pentagon with a cruise missile—somehow managing to dispose of the craft and crew and passengers of the still-missing Flight 77, including my slight friend Barbara Olson—was a best-seller in France, while another book about another 9/11 conspiracy theory was published in the United States by the publishing arm of the Nation magazine. Westminster John Knox Press, a respected house long associated with American Presbyterianism, published Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11, which asserted that the events of that day were planned in order to furnish a pretext for intervention in the Middle East. More explicitly on the Left, my old publishing house Verso—offshoot of the New Left Review—published an anthology of Osama Bin Laden's sermonizing rants in which the editors compared the leader of al-Qaida explicitly, and in the context not unfavorably, to Che Guevara.

So, for me at any rate, the experience of engaging in the 9/11 politico-cultural wars was a vertiginous one in at least two ways. To begin with, I found myself for the first time in my life sharing the outlook of soldiers and cops, or at least of those soldiers and cops who had not (like George Tenet and most of the CIA) left us defenseless under open skies while well-known "no fly" names were allowed to pay cash for one-way tickets after having done perfunctory training at flight schools. My sympathies were wholeheartedly and unironically (and, I claim, rationally) with the forces of law and order. Second, I became heavily involved in defending my adopted country from an amazing campaign of defamation, in which large numbers of the intellectual class seemed determined at least to minimize the gravity of what had occurred, or to translate it into innocuous terms (poverty is the cause of political violence) that would leave their worldview undisturbed. How much easier to maintain, as many did, that it was all an excuse to build a pipeline across Afghanistan (an option bizarrely neglected by American imperialism after the fall of communism in Kabul, when the wretched country could have been ours for the taking!).

My solidarity with soldiers, cops, and other "responders" didn't make me a full convert to the police mentality. I was a named plaintiff in the lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the National Security Agency, for its practice of warrantless wiretapping. I found a way of having myself "waterboarded" by former professionals, in order to satisfy my readers that the process does indeed constitute torture. I have visited Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, those two grotesque hellholes of American panic-reaction, and written very critically from both. And I was and remain unreconciled to the stupid, wasteful, oppressive collective punishment of Americans who try to use our civil aviation, or who want to be able to get into their own offices without showing ID to a guard who has no database against which to check it. But I had also seen Abu Ghraib shortly after it was first broken open in 2003, and could have no truck with the moral defectives who talked glibly as if that mini-Auschwitz and mass grave was no worse. When Amnesty International described Guantanamo as "the Gulag of our time," I felt a collapse of seriousness that I have felt many times since.

One reason for opposing excesses and stupidities on "our" side (actually, why do I defensively lob in those quotation marks? Please consider them as optional) was my conviction that the defeat of Bin-Ladenism was ultimately certain. Al-Qaida demands the impossible—worldwide application of the most fanatical interpretation of sharia—and to forward the demand employs the most hysterically irrational means. (This combination, by the way, would make a reasonable definition of "terrorism.") It follows that the resort to panicky or degrading tactics in order to combat terrorism is, as well as immoral, self-defeating.

Ten years ago I wrote to a despairing friend that a time would come when al-Qaida had been penetrated, when its own paranoia would devour it, when it had tried every tactic and failed to repeat its 9/11 coup, when it would fall victim to its own deluded worldview and—because it has no means of generating self-criticism—would begin to implode. The trove recovered from Bin Laden's rather dismal Abbottabad hideaway appears to confirm that this fate has indeed, with much labor on the part of unsung heroes, begun to engulf al-Qaida. I take this as a part vindication of the superiority of "our" civilization, which is at least so constituted as to be able to learn from past mistakes, rather than remain a prisoner of "faith."

The battle against casuistry and bad faith has also been worth fighting. So have many other struggles to assert the obvious. Contrary to the peddlers of shallow anti-Western self-hatred, the Muslim world did not adopt Bin-Ladenism as its shield against reality. Very much to the contrary, there turned out to be many millions of Arabs who have heretically and robustly preferred life over death. In many societies, al-Qaida defeated itself as well as underwent defeat.

In these cases, then, the problems did turn out to be more complicated than any "simple" solution the theocratic fanatics could propose. But, and against the tendencies of euphemism and evasion, some stout simplicities deservedly remain. Among them: Holocaust denial is in fact a surreptitious form of Holocaust affirmation. The fatwa against Salman Rushdie was a direct and lethal challenge to free expression, not a clash between traditional faith and "free speech fundamentalism." The mass murder in Bosnia-Herzegovina was not the random product of "ancient hatreds" but a deliberate plan to erase the Muslim population. The regimes of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fully deserve to be called "evil." And, 10 years ago in Manhattan and Washington and Shanksville, Pa., there was a direct confrontation with the totalitarian idea, expressed in its most vicious and unvarnished form. Let this and other struggles temper and strengthen us for future battles where it will be necessary to repudiate the big lie.

[RandomGuy]

I loved Robert Pape the moment I read Dying to Win. That book blows away so many of the myths surrounding suicide terrorism.

Very smart individual.

It is astonishing what one learns by actually gathering data, as opposed to sucking up forwarded emails as gospel.

[101A]

Wow that is actually heartening.

True.

However, all it takes is ONE attack again on American soil and we will regress further than we ever have.

Which begs the point.

As much as we need to realize that occupying their lands begets suicide bombers, I hope the bombers and their masters are putting the pieces together that suicide bombers beget our military on their lands.

Hell, before 9/11 they had fewer than 20,000 of our troops on their lands. How'd that whole suicide bomber strategy work out for THEM?

[boutons_deux]

OBL still won, and wins still.

He said he knew he'd get only one chance, and he made it pay off 1000x.

OBL suckered the US into foreign lands (with help from dubya and dickhead and other neo-cons chasing oil) where the US has wasted $Ts and 100s of 1000s of lives, including many 1000s of US lives.

How'd that work out for OBL? Fantastically.

(to say nothing of the police/suveillance state the US has installed for $100Bs of guns while cutting back on butter everywhere)

[ElNono]

As much as we need to realize that occupying their lands begets suicide bombers, I hope the bombers and their masters are putting the pieces together that suicide bombers beget our military on their lands.

It's been 10 years, and the suicides have only increased. Heck, you can go back to way more than 10 years in the Israeli conflict.

Their endgame is "unless you GTFO, you wipe us out or we wipe you out". Ask Israel.

[101A]

OBL still won, and wins still.

He said he knew he'd get only one chance, and he made it pay off 1000x.

OBL suckered the US into foreign lands (with help from dubya and dickhead and other neo-cons chasing oil) where the US has wasted $Ts and 100s of 1000s of lives, including many 1000s of US lives.

How'd that work out for OBL? Fantastically.

(to say nothing of the police/suveillance state the US has installed for $100Bs of guns while cutting back on butter everywhere)


Seriously?

Al Queda is in shambles; Taliban completely uprooted; Sure plenty of people hate us, but what was it OBL was trying to accomplish. Did he want us out of the middle east?

That certainly didn't work.

If his goal was to make sure my wife couldn't carry her glasses repair kit on the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, or make us all take off our shoes to board an airplane, then great, however, I don't think this is what he wanted.

Not to mention the cap his got busted into his own ass. And don't say he didn't care about dying; there were plenty of bombs he could have strapped to himself, after all.

[ElNono]

I would argue that what OBL wanted was the US in the ME. I think after working up Russia they had the feeling they could take on anybody on their terms and in their place.

[ElNono]

I would further argue that it was more difficult to brainwash followers that America=evil when America didn't have a direct presence in the area (thus projecting through Israel).

[ElNono]

To that extent, he got what he wanted.

[ElNono]

He also got a bullet in his skull, which was well deserved.

[boutons_deux]

"Seriously?"

absolutely. For under $500K and 19 lives, OBL, in "assymetric warfare", got the USA to blow $Ts and 1000s of US lives.

His goal was to sucker US into foreign wars. If US were winning and Taleban/AQ were truly destroyed, they why is the US remaining, bleeding $Ts and lives, in Afghanistan and Iraq for as far as anybody wants to extrapolate?

[boutons_deux]

"America didn't have a direct presence in the area"

WTF? US military boots were occupying OBL's sacred Saudi Arabaian sands, 1990 - 2003.

[ElNono]

"America didn't have a direct presence in the area"

WTF? US military boots were occupying OBL's sacred Saudi Arabaian sands, 1990 - 2003.

The Saudi government consented to the presence of the troops. It's a lot easier to make a point when you show up uninvited.

[DarrinS]

I would argue that what OBL wanted was the US in the ME. I think after working up Russia they had the feeling they could take on anybody on their terms and in their place.

This goes against the Pape theory.

[boutons_deux]

"Saudi government"

Just like in the USA, the citizens aren't unanimously in agreement with the govt. OBL and his guys obviously didn't "agree" to US military occupation of SA.

[DarrinS]

In his influential essay, “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” (American Political Science Review 97, no. 3, 2003) and in a subsequent book, Robert Pape has argued that suicidal terrorism is best understood as a strategic means to achieve certain well-defined nationalist goals and should not be considered a consequence of religious ideology. In support of this thesis, he recounts the manner in which Hamas and Islamic Jihad have systematically used suicide bombings to extract concessions from the Israeli government. Like most commentators on this infernal wastage of human life, Pape seems unable to imagine what it would be like to actually believe what millions of Muslims profess to believe. The fact that terrorist groups have demonstrable, short-term goals does not in the least suggest that they are not primarily motivated by their religious dogmas. Pape claims that “the most important goal that a community can have is the independence of its homeland (population, property, and way of life) from foreign influence or control.” But he overlooks the fact that these communities define themselves in religious terms. Pape’s analysis is particularly ill-suited to explaining the actions of Islamists. Al Qaeda and other Islamist groups define their "strategic goals" entirely on the basis of their theology. To attribute “territorial” and “nationalistic” motives to Osama bin Laden seems almost willfully obscurantist, since bin Laden’s only apparent concerns are the spread of Islam and the sanctity of Muslim holy sites. Suicide bombing in the Muslim world tends to be an explicitly religious phenomenon that is inextricable from notions of martyrdom and jihad, predictable on their basis, and sanctified by their logic. It is no more secular an activity than prayer is.

If it were not for the religious doctrines of martyrdom and jihad, there would be no Al Qaeda; nor would there now be an influx of foreign fighters in Iraq. Nothing explains the behavior of Muslim extremists better than what these men and women believe about God, paradise, and the moral imperative of defending the faith against infidels and apostates. Pape resolutely ignores the fact that we are now confronted by people, on a dozen fronts, who will take to streets and start killing innocent civilians whenever their favorite book gets flushed down the toilet. What, exactly, is "secular" about that?

Several readers followed Pape’s and put forward the Tamil Tigers as a rebuttal to my claim that suicidal terrorism is a product of religion. But it is misleading to describe the Tamil Tigers as “secular,” as Pape often does. While the motivations of the Tigers are not explicitly religious, they are Hindus who undoubtedly believe many improbable things about the nature of life and death. The cult of martyr-worship that they have nurtured for decades has many of the features of religiosity that one would expect in people who give their lives so easily for a cause. Secular Westerners often underestimate the degree to which certain cultures, steeped as they are in otherworldliness, look upon death with less alarm than seems strictly rational. I was once traveling in India when the government rescheduled the exams for students who were preparing to enter the civil service: what appeared to me to be the least of bureaucratic inconveniences precipitated a wave of teenage self-immolations in protest. Hindus, even those whose preoccupations appear to be basically secular, often harbor potent religious beliefs.

[MannyIsGod]

This goes against the Pape theory.

How? It actually would show that OBL himself was a subscriber to a form of Pape's theory.

[101A]

How? It actually would show that OBL himself was a subscriber to a form of Pape's theory.

Pape theory is that US military presence in the Mideast = Suicide Bombers

OBL, utilizing suicide bombers would apparently NOT want US troops in the ME; the argument presented was that OBL carried out 9/11 specifically TO get US boots into the Mideast.

[MannyIsGod]

Seriously?

Al Queda is in shambles; Taliban completely uprooted; Sure plenty of people hate us, but what was it OBL was trying to accomplish. Did he want us out of the middle east?

That certainly didn't work.

If his goal was to make sure my wife couldn't carry her glasses repair kit on the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, or make us all take off our shoes to board an airplane, then great, however, I don't think this is what he wanted.

Not to mention the cap his got busted into his own ass. And don't say he didn't care about dying; there were plenty of bombs he could have strapped to himself, after all.

Well if the end of the fourth quarter is now then OBL certainly did not get what he wanted as far as long term goals are concerned. But from what I've read of the man I don't think he ever saw the way to eventual victory through 9/11 type attacks or the a simple terrorist organization such as the original AQ.

What Osama has wanted ever since the ousting of the Russians from Afghanistan is to have a strong Muslim army to project power with. He took this goal to the Saudi royal family in an effort to fight Saddam with such an army upon the invasion of Kuwait. The rebuke he felt was stinging and very much personal when they instead turned to the United States. In many ways I think its hard to think that OBL ever got over that and his hatred of the United States undoubtedly grew from that moment. So all in all his personal goals might be quite different from organizational and operational goals of his organization and the motivations for his long term goals are probably separate from AQ's actions.

My whole point with that is that its well documented that Osama was seeking out a grand war with the United States. His vision was one of a world in which Muslim's rose up against the United States and Israel. He understood the way to do that was to defeat them on his terms as he did in Afghanistan against the USSR. The idea wasn't to cross the ocean and invade the United States but rather invite the United States to the homes of Muslims and there deal them a blow they would feel for a very long time.

It will be interesting to look back in 40 years and see how history views the situation.

[MannyIsGod]

Pape theory is that US military presence in the Mideast = Suicide Bombers

OBL, utilizing suicide bombers would apparently NOT want US troops in the ME; the argument presented was that OBL carried out 9/11 specifically TO get US boots into the Mideast.

Pape's theory is that occupation overall increases the rates of suicide bombers. No where does Pape state that the unequivocal cause of all suicide terror can be traced to occupation.

I would argue that OBL's original AQ and the suicide attacks they carried out would not fall neatly under Pape's theory but also that they shouldn't. Originally prior to 9/11 AQ was an organization that had a large amount of operational prowess. They were able to design and carry out some fairly impressive attacks and they were a very small and compact unit. Now, after the invasion of Afghanistan this organization ceased to exist and instead the ideology of what that organization stood for spread to smaller groups around the world and for various (mostly political reasons) those groups became known as AQ. AQ post 9/11 and AQ pre 9/11 are two completely different animals. That in and of itself - IMO - is the primary reason you've not had an attack of that nature since. The organization was crushed when we invaded Afghanistan and there was no other group out there who could do what they did.

Instead, the invasions - as Pape points out - have caused an increase in suicide terror because they've given a target and motivation to people who would never have picked up the AQ mantle before. Where prior to 9/11 you had a capable and concentrated group of people carrying out these suicide attacks you've now seen the pool of potential suicide terrorists grow as a direct result of foreign occupation.

[boutons_deux]

The Price of 9/11

President George W. Bush’s response to the attacks compromised America’s basic principles, undermined its economy, and weakened its security.

The attack on Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks was understandable, but the subsequent invasion of Iraq was entirely unconnected to Al Qaeda – as much as Bush tried to establish a link. That war of choice quickly became very expensive – orders of magnitude beyond the $60 billion claimed at the beginning – as colossal incompetence met dishonest misrepresentation.

Indeed, when Linda Bilmes and I calculated America’s war costs three years ago, the conservative tally was $3-5 trillion. Since then, the costs have mounted further. With almost 50% of returning troops eligible to receive some level of disability payment, and more than 600,000 treated so far in veterans’ medical facilities, we now estimate that future disability payments and health-care costs will total $600-900 billion. But the social costs, reflected in veteran suicides (which have topped 18 per day in recent years) and family breakups, are incalculable.

Al Qaeda, while not conquered, no longer appears to be the threat that loomed so large in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. But the price paid in getting to this point, in the US and elsewhere, has been enormous – and mostly avoidable. The legacy will be with us for a long time. It pays to think before acting.

http://www.truth-out.org/print/6072

[ElNono]

Pape claims that “the most important goal that a community can have is the independence of its homeland (population, property, and way of life) from foreign influence or control.” But he overlooks the fact that these communities define themselves in religious terms.

The US defines itself in religious terms?

[MannyIsGod]

If the end game is to remove AQ from the face of the earth then we will never win. AQ is no operational group but rather an ideology and methodology of terror. Thats never going back into the bottle.

[ElNono]

This goes against the Pape theory.

Not really. Pape is right that the 'natural' reaction to occupation there is suicide bombers. That predates even AQ. AQ simply wanted to use that tool against America, but without occupation, that was not going to happen.

[ElNono]

And BTW, mixing suicide bombers and AQ and thinking they're both the same is mistaken. There were suicide bombers way before AQ was even a blimp on the monitor.

[MannyIsGod]

Not really. Pape is right that the 'natural' reaction to occupation there is suicide bombers. That predates even AQ. AQ simply wanted to use that tool against America, but without occupation, that was not going to happen.

Bingo. I'm not sure they envisioned a large campaign of suicide terror or the way it played out but after the lessons many of them learned if Afghanistan I think its fairly undeniable that they wanted to fight the US in the Middle East.

[MannyIsGod]

And BTW, mixing suicide bombers and AQ and thinking they're both the same is mistaken. There were suicide bombers way before AQ was even a blimp on the monitor.

Exactly. I also don't think Pape has ever argued that if you could theoretically eliminate all foreign occupations int he world that the level of suicide terror would drop to zero.

[ElNono]

I also disagree with some takes from Pape though. When he says:

"it was easy to presume that Islamic fundamentalism was the central motivating force driving the 19 hijackers to kill themselves in order to kill us"

one can argue that if it wasn't the central motivating force, Islamic fundamentalism was at least a central tool to carry out the attacks.

[MannyIsGod]

What I found reading his prior book (which I really recommend) was that he discounts fundamentalism as the direct cause of suicide terror but not as a partial facilitator. It has been some time since I read it, however.

[Wild Cobra]

The blaming America contingent seems to be biting their tongues here. That's a dramatic change from just a few years back.
I agree we will not see an airline strike that will cause such devastation. That doesn't mean something else may not happen in the future.

I think we should loosen airport security back to pre 911 levels, just keeping the secure cockpits in place.

As for what can happen in the future, it seems the government does have good but has somewhat excessive measures in place. We will never be 100% safe. Time to scale back on security a little.

How many terror cells has Obama found in Libya? Were the missing weapons there? If not, why are we involved?

[Wild Cobra]

I loved Robert Pape the moment I read Dying to Win. That book blows away so many of the myths surrounding suicide terrorism.

Very smart individual.
I see...

Are you an insider of terrorist organizations to know this?

[Wild Cobra]

Don't you think all the above fits under "resent Western power and influence"???

Do you even fucking read any of the posts in a thread? It seems like you just read the title and then post some bullshit filled with acronyms and catch phrases.
I agree.

You have egomaniacs who use religion to gain power. I think it's no more difficult than that. Of course they use such ideas to motivate others, but I doubt they actually believe such things.

[clambake]

I see...

Are you an insider of terrorist organizations to know this?

he could be. just like you knew where all the nukes were. lol

[Wild Cobra]

he could be. just like you knew where all the nukes were. lol
I knew where they were in the late 80's. They do change locations you know.

[clambake]

I knew where they were in the late 80's. They do change locations you know.

so, you lied? go ahead, you can tell them, they know.

[MannyIsGod]

I see...

Are you an insider of terrorist organizations to know this?

I have no idea how your logic operates.

[Wild Cobra]

I have no idea how your logic operates.
yet, you know this:

That book blows away so many of the myths surrounding suicide terrorism.
You make that as if its a statement of fact, so how do you know it to be true?

[boutons_deux]

"OBL carried out 9/11 specifically TO get US boots into the Mideast"

no, to sucker the US into Afghanistan, where the Taleban and friends and earlier generations of Afghanis had success in beating (and bankrupting, St Ronnie didn't do it) the USSR and every other invader. USA is just the latest version of the beaten invader of Afghanistan.

[MannyIsGod]

yet, you know this:

You make that as if its a statement of fact, so how do you know it to be true?

Why don't you read the book?

[Blake]

Why don't you read the book?

no time!

easier to question your sources than to use dat google.

[ElNono]

lol facts are overrated

[DarrinS]

Allahu Akbar actually means "I'm killing innocent civilians to end foreign occupation".

[Spurminator]

Why are you arguing as though anyone is suggesting religion is not a factor in suicide bombings? Try to keep up.

[Winehole23]

Who Really Kept Us Safe After 9/11 (http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/08/who-really-kept-us-safe-after)

The truth about homeland security

Steve Chapman (http://reason.com/people/steve-chapman) | September 8, 2011
If there was any certainty in the weeks and months after the 9/11 attacks, it was that these were just the first in a campaign of terror on American soil. "You can just about bet on it," said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee. New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, "I anticipate another attack."



Gary Stubblefield, who directed the Naval Special Warfare Task Unit in the Pacific area, asserted that, as The Denver Post paraphrased, "the question is not if but when dozens of terrorist cells in the United States will unleash biological, chemical and perhaps nuclear weapons against U.S. cities." FBI Director Robert Mueller estimated the U.S. harbored "several hundred" extremists affiliated with Al Qaeda.


Americans had seen in Israel how a homegrown terrorist movement was able to kill hundreds of people with suicide bombings and other attacks. It seemed we could expect the same. A comment often heard was, "We are all Israelis now."


But the predictions have not come true. There have been very few attacks in this country by Islamic extremists—and nothing remotely on the scale of 9/11. The "sleeper cells" proved to be mostly nonexistent.


This surprising record has been attributed to excellent work by the FBI, CIA, and other law enforcement agencies, the war in Afghanistan, and the Bush administration's aggressive treatment of suspected terrorists. But on the list of those deserving credit, the first is a group hardly anyone would have predicted: American Muslims.


Millions of Muslims live in the United States. Had even a tiny percentage been radicalized enough to commit violence, they could have done immense damage. Despite all the efforts to upgrade security at a few crucial sites, it really wouldn't be hard for any group to kill lots of people.




A car bomb in a stadium parking lot, a couple of semi-automatic rifles in a shopping mall, a Molotov cocktail in a crowded bus, a bomb on a railroad track, a runaway pickup on a city sidewalk—there's an endless list of easy pickings.


There are too many targets to secure them all. It would have been a simple task for a handful of minimally trained volunteers to keep us in a constant state of fear.


But the volunteers, with rare exceptions, didn't come forward. Charles Kurzman, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, writes in Foreign Policy magazine that "approximately a dozen people in the country were convicted in the five years after 9/11 for having links with al-Qaida" and "fewer than 40 Muslim Americans planned or carried out acts of domestic terrorism."


That may sound like a lot, until you remember that there are 15,000 murders a year in this country. A report from the Rand Corp., a national security think tank, noted that of 83 terrorist attacks that took place between 9/11 and the end of 2009, only three "were clearly connected with the jihadist cause." Three!
http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/08/who-really-kept-us-safe-after

[ChuckD]

This goes against the Pape theory.

No, it just means ObL understood the Pape theory of suicide attacks, which really only applies to the masses, not one individual. He wanted us there as a pretext to launch the masses into suicide attacks, not because he welcomed us. It was a means to his end of a great war with the west.

[Yonivore]

http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/08/who-really-kept-us-safe-after
So, Muslims not being radicalized deserve credit? Got it. I would be on board if he gave credit to Muslims that ratted out their radicalized brethren. But, alas, he doesn't believe they exist in America.

A certain Army psychiatrist, named Hassan, and his radicalized Imam that fled the country when he became a wanted terrorist, beg to differ.

And, he fails to mention the threats and plots -- involving radicalized Muslims -- that have been thwarted over the intervening 10 years.

Your writer is an idiot.

[Spurminator]

Yeah I ask my Muslim neighbor every day why he didn't tell anyone about Hassan.

[Winehole23]

Your writer is an idiot.Wooly haired leftists at Reason? Who knew.

[Yonivore]

Wooly haired leftists at Reason? Who knew.
That's a defense?

[Winehole23]

Was there an attack?

[Yonivore]

Was there an attack?
Yes. Major Nidal Hassan massacred a bunch of soldiers at Fort Hood. Perhaps you forgot.

[Winehole23]

Not at all. Who defended it?

[Yonivore]

Not at all. Who defended it?
Who said anyone defended it?

I merely pointed out the writer's premise there have been no attacks because there are no radicalized Muslims in America is false.

[Winehole23]

Except, that's not what he said. Some posters can read, you know.

[Spurminator]

Goalposts!

[Yonivore]

Except, that's not what he said. Some posters can read, you know.
His argument was intended to minimize the efforts of law enforcement and intelligence groups in preventing subsequent terror attacks and place the credit on a bunch of people that did, well, nothing except not radicalize.

That's what he said.

[Winehole23]

Both were emphasized.

[Yonivore]

Both were emphasized.
No, those that actually kept the country safe were minimized by the proposition that Muslims who chose to not radicalize were on the same footing as the law enforcement and intelligence agents that actually were preventing attacks.

If he wanted to give any Muslims credit, he should have emphasized those who were providing intelligence to law enforcement and federal agents about the activities of their radicalized co-religionists. I believe those Muslims exist yet, no mention of them.

Why? Because it plays against his narrative that we should be grateful to Muslims that did absolutely nothing. It's like saying someone is crusading against bank robbers by not robbing banks.

[ElNono]

Why can't we be grateful that some Muslims didn't radicalize AND to those who protect us from radicalized ones?

[Yonivore]

Why can't we be grateful that some Muslims didn't radicalize AND to those who protect us from radicalized ones?
Because those who don't rob banks are different than those who turn their bank robbing friends in to the police.

You say that as if it's some great sacrifice for a Muslim to not radicalize.

[Spurminator]

Because those who don't rob banks are different than those who turn their bank robbing friends in to the police.

You say that as if it's some great sacrifice for a Muslim to not radicalize.

You say this as though we all have bank robbing friends, like every Muslim knows an extremist Muslim.

[Yonivore]

You say this as though we all have bank robbing friends, like every Muslim knows an extremist Muslim.
No, I say that as though those Muslims who actually reported their radicalized co-religionists deserve the credit that would equate them to the law enforcement and federal agents that have prevented subsequent attacks; not the majority of Muslims that simply decided not to radicalize.

You and the author seem to conclude that radicalization is a hard proposition for Muslims to resist and that they should be commended for not doing so.

[Spurminator]

You and the author seem to conclude that radicalization is a hard proposition for Muslims to resist and that they should be commended for not doing so.

No, I don't think they should be commended. I just don't think they should be feared either, as you and your people keep insisting they should.

You have been proven wrong about the inherent extremism of American Muslims for the last ten years and now you're butthurt about it. If you were justified in your suspicions about American Muslims, we would have suffered significantly more attacks since 9/11 than we have had. So you keep harping on the isolated Ft. Hood incident as if it's symptomatic of a much larger problem. It's pathetic.

[ChumpDumper]

Do you think most American Muslims personally know terrorists?

[Yonivore]

No, I don't think they should be commended. I just don't think they should be feared either, as you and your people keep insisting they should.
I don't fear non-radicalized Muslims. But, I don't see how people fearing them -- if, in fact, that's true -- or their passive act of not radicalizing, get's them similar status to people who are actually defending our country against attacks by radicalized Muslims -- such as their co-religionists that are actually , actively participating in identifying and eliminating threats. A group you and the author fail to mention.

That's my point.


You have been proven wrong about the inherent extremism of American Muslims for the last ten years and now you're butthurt about it. If you were justified in your suspicions about American Muslims, we would have suffered significantly more attacks since 9/11 than we have had. So you keep harping on the isolated Ft. Hood incident as if it's symptomatic of a much larger problem. It's pathetic.
Since September 11, 2001, there have been over 25 acts of violence perpetrated by Islamic radicals -- based on their radical beliefs or in a spirit of jihad -- resulting in 55 deaths, and 57 injuries.

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/AmericanAttacks.htm

Doesn't count the thwarted attacks or Americans killed abroad by terrorists.

[boutons_deux]

religionofpeace? A Muslim/Arab xenophobic racist website? :lol

here's back atcha:

http://www.loonwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/piechart2-1024x1024.jpg

http://www.loonwatch.com/2010/01/not-all-terrorists-are-muslims/

:lol fighting bullshit with bullshit. :lol

[Yonivore]

Wait a minute. I let this pass.


No, I don't think they should be commended.


This surprising record has been attributed to excellent work by the FBI, CIA, and other law enforcement agencies, the war in Afghanistan, and the Bush administration's aggressive treatment of suspected terrorists. But on the list of those deserving credit, the first is a group hardly anyone would have predicted: American Muslims.
The whole conversation has principally been about the article commending Muslims that didn't radicalize.

[ElNono]

Because those who don't rob banks are different than those who turn their bank robbing friends in to the police.

Okay, and?


You say that as if it's some great sacrifice for a Muslim to not radicalize.

I didn't say that at all. If that's how your spin machine want to interpret it, then that's your problem. I'm grateful for many things, including the vast majority of people not being extremists, be it in politics or religion.

[ElNono]

The whole conversation has principally been about the article commending Muslims that didn't radicalize.

Do you know how many Muslims Americans are there?

Aren't you glad they're not all radicalized?

[Yonivore]

Do you know how many Muslims Americans are there?

Aren't you glad they're not all radicalized?
I don't see how that has anything to do with the conversation. Are you suggesting is some great feat for them not to be radicalized?

[ElNono]

I don't see how that has anything to do with the conversation. Are you suggesting is some great feat for them not to be radicalized?

It's certainly an option they didn't take. Credit to them for that.

[Agloco]

Not a single mention of the MIC's secret SOCOM murderers garrisoning the planet? the MIC has quit catching, imprisoning, torturing and started simply murdering (and of course they never murder the wrong person, never any collateral murders). SOCOM is creating the terrorists to keep itself in eternal business.


How many secret wars are we fighting?

U.S. special ops forces are being deployed in more and more nations -- and the public has no idea

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/08/04/secert_american_wars

EWS for nuclear/chemical threats tbh.

[boutons_deux]

Early warning?

US military invading a country to murder is an act of war.

Turn it around.

MX, BO, VZ sends in legit "tourists" who are MX military/black ops sent in to murder supposed drug dealers and their families, or political dissidents in exile. Several Americans also get murdered. No big deal, right?

Every country's military has the right to invade secretly any other country, right?

Well, not exactly. Foreign nationals invaded USA to hijack "planes into buildings", and 10 years later, USA still isn't satiated with the blood the it has spilt in revenge.

or is somehow the US exceptional, with more rights than other countries?

You can be sure SOCOM's murders are known by the Muslims and who will be inflamed to more terrorism. SOCOM's murders are excellent "stimulus" for the MIC's All War All The Time Everywhere business plan.