Robert Pape, Associate Professor of the University of Chicago and authour of Dying to Win, was interviewed on Washington Journal this morning.
July 18, 2005 Issue
Copyright © 2005 The American Conservative
The Logic of Suicide Terrorism
It’s the occupation, not the fundamentalism
TAC: So if Islamic fundamentalism is not necessarily a key variable behind these groups, what is?
RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign—over 95 percent of all the incidents—has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.
Updated @1430 7/19/05: Pape was a guest on Scott Horton’s Weekend Interview show last Saturday.