Researcher: Suicide terrorism linked to military occupation

Source: Politico

October 11, 2010
Laura Rozen

Researcher: Suicide terrorism linked to military occupation

Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science professor and former Air Force lecturer, will present findings on Capitol Hill Tuesday that argue that the majority of suicide terrorism around the world since 1980 has had a common cause: military occupation.

Pape and his team of researchers draw on data produced by a six-year study of suicide terrorist attacks around the world that was partially funded by the Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency. They have compiled the terrorism statistics in a publicly available database comprised of some 10,000 records on some 2,200 suicide terrorism attacks, dating back to the first suicide terrorism attack of modern times - the 1983 truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed 241 U.S. Marines.

"We have lots of evidence now that when you put the foreign military presence in, it triggers suicide terrorism campaigns, ... and that when the foreign forces leave, it takes away almost 100% of the terrorist campaign," Pape said in an interview last week on his findings.

Pape said there has been a dramatic spike in suicide bombings in Afghanistan since U.S. forces began to expand their presence to the south and east of the country in 2006. While there were a total of twelve suicide attacks from 2001 to 2005 in Afghanistan when the U.S. had a relatively limited troop presence of a few thousand troops mostly in Kabul, since 2006 there have been over 450 suicide attacks in Afghanistan -- and they are growing more lethal, Pape said.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurarozen/1010/Researcher_Suicide_terrorism_linked_to_military_occupation.html?showall

Cross-referenced from The Epistle Of No Shit!

...because it lays the foundation for understanding terrorism. Efforts to combat terror are doomed to fail if we don't act rationally and from a position of understanding.

In short: most people are driven to commit acts of terrorism when their voices are otherwise silenced by oppression. Terrorism is an expression of anger in a world that permits no other outlet or in which no other outlets are perceived as being effective.

:thumbsup:

http://www.twq.com/06spring/docs/06spring_atran.pdf

"Do we really understand the causes of today’s suicide terrorism? Do suicide attacks stem
mainly from a political cause, such as military occupation? Do they need a
strong organization, such as Al Qaeda?"

And from 2003: http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/000736.html

"Perhaps most important, the close association between foreign military occupations and the growth of suicide terrorist movements in the occupied regions should give pause to those who favor solutions that involve conquering countries in order to transform their political systems. Conquering countries may disrupt terrorist operations in the short term, but it is important to recognize that occupation of more countries may well increase the number of terrorists coming at us."

When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you're the leader of a military/industrial superpower, every international problem-- and not a few domestic ones-- look solvable through intimidation, invasion, and occupation. That just does not work.

The irony in the present context is that those responses are the very ones that favor terrorism, yet we use them over and over to combat terrorism. The "war on terrorism" is bound to fail.

Rich, from saudi arabia - not occupied or oppressed in the slightest.

its a tactic OBL uses - those who carry it out are motivated by the occupation and feelings of powerlessness.

i recommend the documentary "My Trip to Al Qaeda" to every american - inportant context and perspective.

Most of the people who actually hijacked the planes and died making their statements were NOT rich and privileged, etc. And it's always worth noting that there are exceptions to every pattern. Sociopaths are sometimes difficult to distinguish from terrorists who fight because it's the only recourse they feel is open to them.

why don't they? Most likely they don't give a damn!

Thing is ...we don't give a fuck about that. We need oil to sustain our standard of living and we will do what ever it takes to get it.