{"id":816,"date":"2005-07-14T05:23:09","date_gmt":"2005-07-14T05:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:15","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:15","slug":"land_or_blood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=816","title":{"rendered":"Land or Blood??"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve had my eye on this book for a while – “Dying to Win: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism<\/a>” by Robert Pape of the University of Chicago. Kevin Drum<\/a> linked to an interview with Professor Pape in the American Conservative<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He makes some statements sure to raise the hackles on some of our readers…but I’d want to read his research before responding, and to be honest, an exhaustive review of suicide bombing is worth going over, regardless of whether the ideology expressed by the author agrees with your or not. I think hackle-raising is good, and that it’s important to challenge your assumptions to see how well they stand up.<\/p>\n

In the interview, he says:<\/p>\n

TAC:<\/b> So if Islamic fundamentalism is not necessarily a key variable behind these groups, what is?<\/p>\n

\nRP:<\/b> The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign\u2014over 95 percent of all the incidents\u2014has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

TAC:<\/b> That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush\u2019s policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don’t have to fight them here.<\/p>\n

\nRP:<\/b> Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.<\/p>\n

\nSince 1990, the United States has stationed tens of thousands of ground troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and that is the main mobilization appeal of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. People who make the argument that it is a good thing to have them attacking us over there are missing that suicide terrorism is not a supply-limited phenomenon where there are just a few hundred around the world willing to do it because they are religious fanatics. It is a demand-driven phenomenon. That is, it is driven by the presence of foreign forces on the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. The operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorism and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now this is an interesting statement on a number of levels, and one I want to think hard about. He ties suicide bombing closely to nationalist<\/a> (i.e. territorial) aspirations, not to cultural ones.<\/p>\n

This seems like one of those “cleavage” notions; your perceptions on this issue will drive you to one side or the other of a deep political divide. If you believe this is relatively tightly tied to nationalist aspirations, then the terrorists become part and parcel of the admirable line of those fighting for their homelands. If not, it’s the Clash of Cultures, and a global war.<\/p>\n

I’ve suggested for a while that there are some fuzzy bridges between the two; that Franz Fanon and Che Guevera are connected to Qutb and Osama bin Laden. <\/p>\n

I’ll also suggest that – since I now take the words of our enemies very seriously – you go look at Bin Laden’s original 1998 fatwa; which was based largely on his outrage at the US war against Iraq in the first Gulf War, and on the presence of U.S. military on the Arabian Peninsula. <\/p>\n

Personally, I’m inclined to believe that there would have been another causus belli for the Islamists had it not been this. But I think this is an interesting question, and look forward to reading the book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve had my eye on this book for a while – “Dying to Win: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism” by Robert Pape of the University of Chicago. Kevin Drum linked to an interview with Professor Pape in the American Conservative. He makes some statements sure to raise the hackles on some of our readers…but I’d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}