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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (197471)	8/15/2006 10:28:33 AM
From: SARMAN	Respond to of 281500

Thus, don't the Lebanese people bear the blame for its government's refusal to disarm Hizbullah? Don't the American people bear blame for their government foreign policy. HAWKMOON, you just justified 9/11.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (197471)	8/15/2006 1:56:12 PM
From: geode00	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

"Last month, Scott McConnell caught up with 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 off by a wide margin. 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. Below are excerpts from a conversation with the man who knows more about suicide terrorists than any other American. The American Conservative: Your new book, Dying to Win, has a subtitle: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Can you just tell us generally on what the book is based, what kind of research went into it, and what your findings were? Robert Pape: Over the past two years, I have collected the first complete database of every suicide-terrorist attack around the world from 1980 to early 2004. This research is conducted not only in English but also in native-language sources—Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Tamil, and others—so that we can gather information not only from newspapers but also from products from the terrorist community. The terrorists are often quite proud of what they do in their local communities, and they produce albums and all kinds of other information that can be very helpful to understand suicide-terrorist attacks. This wealth of information creates a new picture about what is motivating suicide terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism is not as closely associated with suicide terrorism as many people think. The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. This is a Marxist group, a completely secular group that draws from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of the country. They invented the famous suicide vest for their suicide assassination of Rajiv Ghandi in May 1991. The Palestinians got the idea of the suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers. TAC: So if Islamic fundamentalism is not necessarily a key variable behind these groups, what is? RP: 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—over 95 percent of all the incidents—has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.... If Islamic fundamentalism were the pivotal factor, then we should see some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world, like Iran, which has 70 million people—three times the population of Iraq and three times the population of Saudi Arabia—with some of the most active groups in suicide terrorism against the United States. However, there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Iran, and we have no evidence that there are any suicide terrorists in Iraq from Iran. Sudan is a country of 21 million people. Its government is extremely Islamic fundamentalist. The ideology of Sudan was so congenial to Osama bin Laden that he spent three years in Sudan in the 1990s. Yet there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Sudan. I have the first complete set of data on every al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from 1995 to early 2004, and they are not from some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world. Two thirds are from the countries where the United States has stationed heavy combat troops since 1990. Before our invasion, Iraq never had a suicide-terrorist attack in its history. Never. Since our invasion, suicide terrorism has been escalating rapidly with 20 attacks in 2003, 48 in 2004, and over 50 in just the first five months of 2005. Every year that the United States has stationed 150,000 combat troops in Iraq, suicide terrorism has doubled. TAC: So your assessment is that there are more suicide terrorists or potential suicide terrorists today than there were in March 2003? RP: I have collected demographic data from around the world on the 462 suicide terrorists since 1980 who completed the mission, actually killed themselves. This information tells us that most are walk-in volunteers. Very few are criminals. Few are actually longtime members of a terrorist group. For most suicide terrorists, their first experience with violence is their very own suicide-terrorist attack...." amconmag.com =============An oldie but goodie. If I remember correctly, Iraq takes worldwide suicide rates off the charts. If you keep the ignorant hysteria going then you never understand it and never get it to go away. That is, of course, what YOU DO WITH TERRORISM. It isn't 'defeated' because it's a tactic, it's a piece of working knowledge. It is reduced or eliminated simply because it isn't successful in achieving its goals. Right now, because of rightwing governments and their inanely inept foreign wars and incursions coupled with diplomatic and political incompetence, terrorism is flourishing. Get rid of the cause and you will get rid of the effect. That's a great deal cheaper and more effective than checking baby diapers at airports.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (197471)	8/15/2006 3:41:37 PM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

That doesn't sound like the Lebanese have been very friendly to me. Thus, don't the Lebanese people bear the blame for its government's refusal to disarm Hizbullah? And your family in travelling to Lebanon was supporting the Lebanese government and people. In turn, she bears the blame also. Can we launch a cruise at her home...while you're there for dinner. BUSH IS AN ABYSMAL FAILURE. HE FAILED TO FIND THE WMD; HE'S FAILED TO ACCOUNT FOR THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION; HE'S FAILED TO RESTORE PEACE AND SECURITY TO THE REGION; HE'S FAILED TO ENFORCE 1441. HE'S FAILED TO PROVIDE ADEQUATE SECURITY AT OUR BORDERS. ONE FAILURE AFTER ANOTHER. IT'S ALMOST AN ENDLESS LIST OF FAILURES. Mostly cloudy with a current temp of 84, jttmab