honoring Guy Carawan and the Highlander Center. It's for a great
cause, a noble institution and now, an even greater show.
Ed
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/10/12/terrorism/
They hate us for our occupations
By Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com: October 12, 2010
In this Sept 11, 2007 file picture, plumes of fire and smoke fill the sky
after a suicide car bomb explosion hit fuel tanker trucks on the main
highway south of Kabul, Afghanistan.*
In 2004, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld commissioned a task force to
study what causes Terrorism, and it concluded
that Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies":
specifically, *"American direct intervention in the Muslim world"* through
our "one sided support in favor of Israel"; support for Islamic tyrannies in
places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and, most of all, "the American
occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan" (the full report is
here<http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/dsb/commun.pdf>).
Now, a new, comprehensive study from Robert Pape, a University of Chicago
political science professor and former Air Force lecturer, substantiates
what is (a) already bleedingly obvious and (b) known to the U.S. Government
for many years: namely, that the prime cause of suicide bombings is not
Hatred of Our Freedoms or Inherent Violence in Islamic Culture or a Desire
for Worldwide Sharia Rule by Caliphate, but rather. . . . foreign military
occupations. As summarized by *Politico*'s Laura
Rozen<http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurarozen/1010/Researcher_Suicide_terrorism_linked_to_military_occupation.html?showall>
:
Pape. . . will present findings on Capitol Hill Tuesday that argue that
"the majority of suicide terrorism around the world since 1980 has had
a common cause: military occupation."
Pape and his team of researchers draw on data
http://cpost.uchicago.edu/>produced by a six-year study of suicide
terrorist attacks around the world that was partially funded by the Defense
Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency. They have compiled the
terrorism statistics in a publicly available database comprised of some
10,000 records on some 2,200 suicide terrorism attacks, dating back to
"the first suicide terrorism attack of modern times" - the 1983 truck
bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed 241
U.S. Marines.
"We have lots of evidence now that when you put the foreign military
presence in, it triggers suicide terrorism campaigns, ... and that when the
foreign forces leave, it takes away almost 100% of the terrorist
campaign," Pape said in an interview last week on his findings.
Pape said there has been *a dramatic spike in suicide bombings in
Afghanistan since U.S. forces began to expand their presence to the south
and east of the country in 2006.* . . . Deaths due to suicide attacks in
Afghanistan have gone up by a third in the year since President Obama added
another 30,000 U.S. troops. "It is not making it any better," Pape said.
Pape believes his findings have important implications even for countries
where the U.S. does not have a significant direct military presence, but *is
perceived by the population to be indirectly occupying.*
For instance, across the border from Afghanistan, suicide terrorism exploded
in Pakistan in 2006 as the U.S. put pressure on then Pakistani President
Gen. Pervez Musharraf "to divert 100,000 Pakistani army troops from their
[perceived] main threat [India] to western Pakistan," Pape said.
Imagine that. Isn't Muslim culture just so bizarre, primitive, and
inscrutable? As strange as it is, they actually seem to dislike it when
foreign militaries bomb, invade and occupy their countries, and Western
powers interfere in their internal affairs by overthrowing and covertly
manipulating their
governments<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/world/25military.html>,
imposing sanctions that kill hundreds of thousands of Muslim
children<http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1084>,
and arming their enemies. Therefore (of course), the solution to Terrorism
is to interfere more in their countries by continuing to occupy, bomb,
invade, assassinate, lawlessly imprison and control them, because that's the
only way we can Stay Safe. There are people over there who are angry at us
for what we're doing in their world, so we need to do much more of it to
eradicate the anger. That's the core logic of the War on Terror. How is
that
working<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/05/muslims>
out<http://www.gallup.com/poll/143294/approval-gains-nearly-erased-middle-east-north-africa.aspx>
* * * * *
Akbar Ahmed, the Chair of Islamic Studies at American University, was
on *Bloggingheads
TV* yesterday with Robert Wright discussing convicted attempted Times Square
bomber Faisal Shahzad, and said
this<http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/31505?in=12:41&out=16:58>
:
Take the case of Faisal Shahzad. He seems to be, if you put him in a
category . . . he grows up with the reputation of being a party guy, a
party boy in the tribal areas [in Pakistan]. . . . He then comes to America
and all the pictures are of a modern young man. . . . He changes, but he
changes, again, for interesting reasons. The media would have us believe
that it's the violence in the Koran and the religion of Islam. But hear
what he's saying. He's in fact saying: *I am taking revenge for the drone
strikes in the tribal areas*. So he's acting more like a tribesman whose
involvement in Pashtun values . . . one of *the primary features of that is
revenge*, rather then saying I'm going to have a jihad or I've been trained
by literalists . . . .
That is confirmed by mountains of
evidence<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/10/06/terrorism>not
only about what motivated Shahzad but most anti-American Terrorists as
well: severe anger over the violence and interference the U.S. brings to
their part of the world. The only caveat I'd add to Professor Ahmed's
remarks is that a desire to exact vengeance for foreign killings on your
soil is hardly a unique attribute of Pashtun culture. It's fairly
universal. See, for instance, the furious American response to the one-day
attack on 9/11 -- still going strong even after 9 years. As Professor Pape
documents: "when you put the foreign military presence in, it triggers
suicide terrorism campaigns . . . and that *when the foreign forces leave,
it takes away almost 100% of the terrorist campaign*." It hardly takes a
genius to figure out the most effective way of reducing anti-American
Terrorism; the only question is whether that's the actual goal of those in
power.
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