I try to stay as cynical and well-informed as possible, so when I learn that something I thought was relatively obvious is not true at all, I am surprised. I was thus quite surprised to see a bit of reporting/analysis so out of line with the junta’s media cartel’s worldview that it was banished to the NYT op-eds.
Robert A. Pape did an actual study of suicide bombings and found that they are a tactic not of religious fundamentalists, but of nationalist liberation movements.
Many, myself included, have commented on the Vietnam-like policy catastrophe in Iraq arising from the mistaken/deceptive claim that resistance to occupation is actually a jihadist crusade. Analogies to the myopic view of Vietnam as a mere domino in the Cold War, rather than a post-colonial nation aspiring to independence fit a little better today.
More detailed results follow:
What nearly all suicide terrorist attacks actually 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. Religion is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in seeking aid from abroad, but is rarely the root cause.
Suicide bombings are thus primarily a military tactic of a desperate nationalist liberation movement.
It is interesting that “Democracies” seem to be the favored targets for suicide attacks. This may be due to the antiquated perception that citizens in a democracy can effect the war plans of their rulers.
This conclusion is interesting in that it suggests that the U.S. occupation is the problem, and that the chorus of ‘moderates’ claiming that we must stay until Iraq is “fixed” are essentially advocating a nonsense non-solution which will, in fact, make things worse. Of course anyone with a reality-based approach may have already noticed that things are indeed getting worse continually, but not so gradually. Now we have empirical underpinnings to make the reality-based case for immediate and complete withdrawal. Obviously this suggestion will remain taboo, but it will eventually be adopted, one way or another.
Pape draws a more interesting conclusion from the observed correlation between democracies and suicide tactics with implications for the neocon agenda, were it by chance to be sincere, rather than a smokescreen for standard imperialist conquest.
So spreading democracy by force will be expected to simultaneously spread suicide bombings. This may already be visible in Iraq, and in the secret civil war in Saudi Arabia:
Pape tiptoes around the connection between the US troops formerly stationed in Saudi Arabia, the attacks of 9/11, and Bin Laden’s goal of driving western forces and their puppet thugs out of Arab lands. He dodges this touchy subject by simply projecting the the fact that occupation spreads suicide attacks, and we are spreading occupation:
Update [2005-5-18 8:54:30 by cached]: zappini , over at dKos, shared a truly fascinating bit of independent support:
Christoph Reuter, a reporter for Germany’s Stern magazine, have spent
years working on the profile of the “typical suicide assassin”, only to
conclude that there is no such person. His well-researched history of
suicide attacks, which touches on the 12th-century Assassins but
concentrates on today, shows this to be generally true. Suicide
attackers can be educated and uneducated; religious and secular;
comfortably off and destitute: their link is the decision they make to
transform their powerlessness into extraordinary power. No credible
threat can be made against those who have no desire to survive.