Just a small point to ponder. I caught some of Robert Pape’s talk on suicide bombing on C-Span the other day. It was fascinating, though I’m not sure I buy his thesis entirely. Here it is, as explained in a Boston Globe article I found on the web:

’’Dying to Win” draws on a thorough database of all suicide attacks recorded since the contemporary practice was born during the Lebanese civil war in the early 1980s: a total of 315 incidents through 2003, involving 462 suicidal attackers. Of the 384 attackers for whom Pape has data, who committed their deeds in such danger zones as Sri Lanka (where the decidedly non-fundamentalist, quasi-Marxist Tamil Tigers have used suicide attacks since 1987 in their fight for a Tamil homeland), Israel, Chechnya, Iraq, and New York, only 43 percent came from religiously affiliated groups. The balance, 57 percent, came from secular groups. Strikingly, during the Lebanese civil war, he says, some 70 percent of suicide attackers were Christians (though members of secular groups). The thrust of his argument is that suicide terrorism is an eminently rational strategy. Everywhere it has been used, the countries that face it make concessions: The United States left Lebanon; Israel withdrew from Lebanon and now (much of) the West Bank; and Sri Lanka gave the Tamils a semiautonomous state. Since occupation spurs terrorism, Pape concludes that America should ‘’expeditiously” (but not recklessly) withdraw troops from Iraq. It should also reduce its energy dependence on the Middle East, refrain from posting troops in the Gulf States, and return to a strategy of balancing the Middle Eastern countries against one another from afar–policy prescriptions that have inspired criticism apart from his social science. (‘’Wouldn’t [Pape’s recommendations] be the ultimate concession to the suicide strategy?” Martin Kramer, a specialist in Middle Eastern studies, asked after the 2003 article appeared.)

Me: Now, as other critics have noted, Paper seems to downplay the fact that suicide bombings are largely the product of Muslim or Arab cultures. Also, his occupation begets terrorism formulation is way too cute for me. He makes it sound like wherever we face suicide bombers we must withdraw. Well, what if even after we — and Israel — withdraw from all “Muslim lands” (which would mean no more Israel of course) we face suicide bombers in Spain? Or majority Muslim areas of Holland? The “occupation” al Qaeda initially opposed was America’s encampment in Kuwait and Saudia Arabia. We were there at the request of those governments. Those commitments don’t become “occupations” just because a bunch of nutbags kill themselves in the process of attacking us. Leaving the definition of “occupation” up to a bunch of psychopaths strikes me as a recipe for perpetual surrender.

Nonetheless, Pape’s data do cast a very useful light of realism on some of the slogans about Islam and terrorism.