In an article titled It’s the Occupation, Stupid, Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, who has been studying terrorism in many countries for a long time, says that the argument that we hear that terrorists hate us for who we are and what we represent, as formulated bt then president George W. Bush that “They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other” is simply not true.
New research provides strong evidence that suicide terrorism such as that of 9/11 is particularly sensitive to foreign military occupation, and not Islamic fundamentalism or any ideology independent of this crucial circumstance. Although this pattern began to emerge in the 1980s and 1990s, a wealth of new data presents a powerful picture.
More than 95 percent of all suicide attacks are in response to foreign occupation, according to extensive research that we conducted at the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Terrorism, where we examined every one of the over 2,200 suicide attacks across the world from 1980 to the present day.
…
Intelligent decisions require putting all the facts before us and considering new approaches. The first step is recognizing that occupations in the Muslim world don’t make Americans any safer — in fact, they are at the heart of the problem.
Mano, I want to thank you for this post really.
The post 9/11 world has given the word Muslim a very negative connotation. A Muslim who keeps a beard for religious reasons is automatically a suspected terrorist. I see public forums full of anti Muslim sentiment. Its a real treat to see someone talking sense on this issue these days.
Thankyou
I agree. The connection between civilian based terrorism and foreign occupation has been known for millenia. Obscuring this obvious conclusion is probably one reason why the warhawk pundit machine so often dismisses the facility of learning from history.