[lbo-talk] Motives of the London bombers

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sat Aug 6 11:09:45 PDT 2005


On Tue, 2 Aug 2005, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:


> While Pape's argument does a good job explaining the motivation of the
> organizers of suicide attacks, it is not very effective in explaining the
> motivation of people of people who actually participate in them.

I'm not sure I follow your objection here, Wojtek. As I understand him, Pape is saying the motivation of the bombers is precisely the same as those of the organizers: to end a military occupation of land.

If you mean the physical motivation, to put their bodies in the path of danger, Pape's argument is that it isn't essentially different from the motivation of people who went to Spain to fight in the Civil War. It probably takes more motivation to go to certain death than just a decent probability of death. But Pape's argument here -- and you echo yourself -- turns on effectiveness. The basic argument for suicide bombing is that it's more effective. Not just that kills more people and can't be stopped, but that it so frightens the enemy with the testimony to your implacability that that is what convinces him he can't win.

I mean, in retrospect, the people who died in Spain died in vain, whereas, arguably, the suicide bombers of Hezbollah were ultimately victorious. So if you were the kind of person looking literally to sacrifice himself for a noble cause, it's a perfectly rational choice to choose what looks like the effective means over a safer means you're sure will be pointless. Certainly this choice drastically cuts down the number of people willing to sign up. But on Pape's argumetn, it's just a smaller, denser selection from the same pool of people with the same motivations:

URL: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1418817.htm

<excerpt>

ROBERT PAPE: Suicide terrorists are not mainly depressed, lonely

individuals on the margins of society. I've studied 462 suicide

terrorists from around the world since 1980. Few fit the standard

stereotype of a depressed, lonely individual on the margins of

society. Half of those 462 are secular and therefore not religious

fanatics.

In fact, most suicide terrorists are socially integrated, productive

members of their community like the London bombers. Most suicide

terrorists, and this is true including those in Lebanon and Palestine,

are working-class and middle-class like the London bombers. Most

suicide terrorists are walk-in volunteers who are not long-time

members of the terrorist organisation and, therefore, easy for

intelligence services to track for years. Most suicide terrorists join

the suicide terrorist group just a few months or even just a few weeks

in order to do their very first act of violence - their own suicide

terrorist attack.

For most suicide terrorists, they don't have evidence as the London

bombers don't, that they hate Western values or that they hate being

immersed in Western society. What we have evidence for time and again

across the spectrum is that they are deeply angered by military

policies, especially foreign combat troops on territory that they

prize and that they believe they have no other means to change those

policies.

<end excerpt>

I don't see how your machismo/misogyny/alienation explanation fits his data better than his. Nor that it's more economical. Of course you're free to reject his data or his logic, but that's a different tack.

Michael



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