A reader wrote to me this afternoon:

Suggest that you consider an alternative analysis by Robert Pape, UofChicago, Poly Sci. Ask oneself, "What would motivate me to commit this act?" His logic works for me. [emphasis added]

To which I reply:

Thanks for writing and thanks for the link. Unfortunately Pape's explanation contains a loophole, a problem and a giant contradiction. The wikipedia entry you sent notes:

"what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland"

Problem is, the Islamists explicitly consider major parts of Europe their homeland--not to mention, in a larger sense, as I noted in the post, the entire planet. It is all supposed to be Allah's. Which makes it hard to call their motivations "secular".

It also gives the option to the terrorist. I.e., what would they--unilaterally--consider to be their "homeland" (whatever that term means across history and in an era of increasing balkanization). Does anyone else's view ever come into it? E.g., the people living there who don't hold 1500 year grudges?

I suspect Pape's analysis would be strikingly different if:

1) he included data after 2003 (the 315 attacks he claims as comprehensive globally is a miniscule number overall, much less for Iraq or Israel--see for example, Robert Spencer's "Religion of Peace" site. Granted, not all of those are suicides, but the counter stands at 9601(!)... even if 10% of those are suicides (a conservative estimate IMHO), we're already off by orders of magnitude

2) He weighted motivations based not on incidents but casualties. So doing, 9-11 would certainly skew the numbers. And it was so obviously motivated by Islamic fundamentalism as to not warrant further comment. Still want to call it "secular"?

The terrorists' strategic goal (to the extent they have one) is to remove us from territory they consider their own. With 9-11, that starts to imply the East Coast. With WMD, it implies the whole world. (Yeah, I know OBL blathered on about Saudi, but if all American interests are then fair game, where does it stop?)
Kobayashi Maru | Homepage | 09.27.07 - 5:02 pm | #

Not completely apropos, but I am often struck by the silliness of the notion that, if we were not in Iraq, the Iraqis would be at peace. If they are killing one another to gain dominance in Iraq, why would our departure make them stop wanting dominance, or even believing that violence is the most direct means of achieving that dominance?

Also, the excuses given through the Western media for the 11 Sept. attacks shift more than the Democrat party line. The internal writings remain rather more constant.
Michael Adams | 09.29.07 - 3:12 am | #