[i do not agree with the general notion, advanced both in the piece below and in the debate at large, that one can leap glibly between al qaeda, their propaganda and motivations and those of the perpetrators of various acts and their supporters. nonetheless, i forward material such as the below to counteract the 'bambi' offence. --ravi]
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1418817.htm
Australian Broadcasting Corporation TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1418817.htm Broadcast: 20/07/2005
US 'misread motivation' of suicide bombers Reporter: Kerry O'Brien
KERRY O'BRIEN: Not everyone accepts the stereotype of suicide bombers recruited by the Al Qaeda network, as religiously-inspired haters of Western values, intent of destroying Western civilisation. One American analyst has conducted a comprehensive study of every act of suicide terrorism over the past 25 years to understand what drives suicide bombers and why suicide terrorism is on the rise around the world. He says it's too simplistic to assume Islamic fundamentalism in the central cause.
Associate Professor Richard Pape, from the University of Chicago, has produced a book on that study called Dying to Win - The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. And he says America has misread the primary motivation of suicide bombers. I spoke with Robert Pape earlier today.
Robert Pape, after all of your studies, all of your trawling over hundreds of cases of suicide terrorism over decades, how did you react to the London bombings?
ROBERT PAPE, SUICIDE TERRORISM EXPERT: The London attacks were part of Al Qaeda's strategic logic, which they have been pursuing with increasing vigour since 9/11. Since 2002 Al Qaeda has carried out over 15 suicide and other terrorist attacks killing nearly 700 people, more than all of the years before 9/11 combined. Although many have hoped that our counter-terrorism efforts would have weakened Al Qaeda by the measure that counts the ability of the group to kill us, Al Qaeda is stronger today than before 9/11.
KERRY O'BRIEN: You say America and its allies continue to make fundamental errors in the way they read the strategic logic behind Al-Qaeda and associated terrorists. In what way?
ROBERT PAPE: There's a faulty premise in the current strategy on the war on terrorism. That faulty premise is that suicide terrorism and Al Qaeda suicide terrorism in particular is mainly driven by an evil ideology Islamic fundamentalism independent of other circumstances. However, the facts are that since 1980, suicide terrorist attacks from around the world over half have been secular. What over 95 per cent of suicide attacks around the world [are about] is not religion, but a specific strategic purpose - to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland or prize greatly and this is in fact a centrepiece of Al Qaeda's strategic logic, which is to compel the United States and Western countries to abandon military commitments on the Arabian Peninsula.
KERRY O'BRIEN: You say that September 11, Bali, Madrid and now the London bombings are not part of an Islamic fundamentalist attack on Western civilisation, Western decadence, yet the kind of hate literature that comes from Islamic extremists say exactly that, an attack on Western civilisation, Western democracy.
ROBERT PAPE: We have strong evidence to the contrary. The British Home Office just released a four-volume report that they conducted in 2004 - and you can find it on the London Times web site - that four-volume report is about attitudes in the British Muslim community.
There are 1.6 million Muslims in Britain. The Home Office found that 13 per cent of those Muslims believed that suicide attacks against the West were justified. They further found that the central reason for why those 13 per cent believed those suicide attacks were justified was anger over British military policies on the Arabian Peninsula. The link between anger over American, British and Western military forces stationed on the Arabian Peninsula and Al Qaeda's ability to recruit suicide terrorists to kill us couldn't be tighter.
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