> 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.
WS: A lot of people are deeply angered by military policies - from Latin America, to South-Eastern Europe, and to the Middle East. A lot of these people actually do something to thwart these policies, but only a handful of them decide to attack civilian targets that have weak if any connection to these policies. What is more, people who recruit suicide bombers and organize their activities do not blow themselves up - they depend on others willing to do so.
This, imho, is what is wrong with Pape's argument - it identifies neither sufficient nor a necessary condition for participation in terrorist violence.
Another problem with his argument is that he assumes that people have already made up their mind when their join a terrorist organization. However, literature on social movement recruitment suggest that this is seldom the case - and it is the participation in movement activities that changes motivation. With that in mind, a more likely scenario - if we were to keep the military policy as a single cause argument - is that people who are angered by military policies are more likely to join social movements, which then "brainwash" them to do a suicide bombing stunt.
But that brings us very close to what I have been arguing all the time (based on the seminal work of Jack Katz _Seductions of Crime_). Few people make up their mind about blowing others up and then join an organization to accomplish that goal. In most cases they join an organization to which they are attracted for psycho-social reasons, and then as a result of participation in that organization (or movement), or even an informal group) they start blowing other people up.
I further think that since males are more likely than females to join exclusive and violent organization, be it a terrorist cell, or a street gang, or for that matter the Marines - this suggests that masculinity, or at least social construction of it, is a non-trivial factor. Add to it the fact that sexual morality, or rather a certain view of it, is what often provokes outbursts of violence - from domestic violence, to gang rape, to bombing of abortion clinics, and to terrorist acts to defend "our women's chastity."
Wojtek