It’s Not Who We Are, It’s What We Do

July 22nd, 2005 at 22:12 Björn Hallberg

What can terrorists teach us?

Three new studies, by very different authors taking very different tacks, reach much the same conclusion about modern terrorism: that its practitioners, especially its foot soldiers, are motivated not so much by Islamic fantasies of the caliphate’s restoration and the snuffing of freedom, but rather by resistance to foreign occupation of Arab lands.

Nothing about this conclusion makes terrorist acts more justified, or less abhorrent, or a slighter assault on the bonds of civilization. Understanding is not the same as excusing. Still, understanding can be a useful tool for devising a cogent response and an effective policy.

The most provocative and widely read study is Robert Pape’s book Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Pape, a military historian and professor at the University of Chicago, catalogued every terrorist suicide bombing from 1983 to 2003—in all, 315 attacks carried out by 462 bombers. He concludes that, except for a couple of dozen random incidents, these bombings were elements of various coordinated campaigns—involving 18 different organizations over a 20-year period—all of which had in common “a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel democracies to withdraw military forces from the terrorists’ national homeland.”

Entry 173 filed under: Middle East. This entry was posted 3 years, 5 months ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.