Dying To Win

Athough the revaluation of the Chinese Yuan is big news today, I am saving that discussion for later. In the meantime, I ran across a review of a new book by Robert Pape, Dying To Win, that deals with the motivation of suicide bombers. http://www.antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=6712

The author apparently analyzed all suicide attacks between 1980 and 2004 and reached the following conclusions:

Religious beliefs are less important than supposed. For instance, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist secular group, are the world's leader in suicide terrorism. The largest Islamic fundamentalist countries have not been responsible for any suicide terrorist attack. None have come from Iran or the Sudan. Until the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iraq never had a suicide terrorist attack in all of its history. Between 1995 and 2004, the al-Qaeda years, two-thirds of all attacks came from countries where the U.S. had troops stationed. Iraq's suicide missions today are carried out by Iraqi Sunnis and Saudis. Recall, 15 of the 19 participants in the 9/11 attacks were Saudis.

The clincher is this: the strongest motivation, according to Pape, is not religion but rather a desire 'to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory the terrorists view as their homeland.'

Wow - you mean they don't hate us because we have "freedom"? You mean they don't throw away the instinct of self-preservation just because "we" get to vote in elections? Could it really be that people of the world don't like foreign troops occupying their country and bombing them? Shocking.

People in the Semitic world have been making this point for years, but finally someone in America has gotten the point. I would hope that this data would set the record straight about Bush's dishonesty about the war in Iraq and the so-called "war on terror", but I suppose that anyone who worships Bush enough to take what he says on faith would not respond well to logic and data to the contrary (I swear, you would think Bush is the second coming of Christ with how obediently the Christian community follows his sayings - he's not a prophet people).

The media and the administration will continue to lie to the public with the "jealousy" explanation for terrorism in order to justify a perpetual war that serves no other purpose than to enrich Northrop-Grumman, Halliburton and other big contributors to the Republican party. This book, along with the Karl Rove scandal, the lies about WMD's and the complete disaster in Iraq illustrate the naivete of the American public who believe a man with NO military experience and a solid C average in school (who, along with most Americans, probably learned nothing in history) as he leads the country into military disaster and moral bankruptcy. Bush accused Kerry of flip-flopping in the elections, but Bush's only real talent as a President has been making up new bullshit as his previous lies are unveiled.



Luke 16:10
"Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much."