Bloggence, Cunning, Exile

It's the Occupation, Not Islam

The Logic of Suicide Terrorism:
It's the Occupation, Not the Fundamentalism
By Scott McConnell
The American Conservative

In June, The American Conservative magazine interviewed Associate Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, whose book on suicide terrorism, Dying to Win, is beginning to receive wide notice. Pape has found that the most common American perceptions about who the terrorists are and what motivates them are wrong. In his office is the world's largest database of information about suicide terrorists, rows and rows of manila folders containing articles and biographical snippets in dozens of languages compiled by Pape and teams of graduate students, a trove of data that has been sorted and analyzed and which underscores the great need for reappraising the Bush administration's current strategy. . . .

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Prof Pape's conclusion:

"The central motive for anti-American terrorism, suicide terrorism, and catastrophic terrorism is response to foreign occupation, the presence of our troops. The longer our forces stay on the ground in the Arabian Peninsula, the greater the risk of the next 9/11, whether that is a suicide attack, a nuclear attack, or a biological attack."

posted by E. Heroux @ 10:23 AM