Ok, I need some help here...

[RonPaul507]

Been debating this guy on a forum for a week or so back and fourth on foreign policy. My head hurts and this latest post he made just boggles my mind idk the dude obviously has a twisted view of a lot of shit IMO.

Originally Posted by Gophers507 View Post
Well thank you I appreciate that. My Blowback post:

ME: You really need to reassess your idea of terrorism and why it exists. How noble has our foreign policy of the past 50 years really been? It's sickening to see people get sucked into this terrorism boogeyman. More people on avg. get killed by bee stings each year. I've been in law enforcement and criminal justice for awhile and a big thing we look for in criminal investigations is MOTIVE. So they just hate us because we're free and because we're such great people right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowbac...ntelligence)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_t...cide_Terrorism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1SYWi2GYWI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuKBDHWDgBo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B45aTPOevQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5SoE9vBc6I

"We believe that the worst thieves in the world today and the worst terrorists are the Americans" - Osama Bin Laden 1998 interview

"Bin Laden had issued his own self-styled fatwa calling on Muslims to drive American soldiers out of Saudi Arabia" - 9/11 commission report

"Condemned the Saudi monarchy for allowing the presence of an army of infidels in a land with the sites most sacred to Islam" - 9/11 commission report

-He took issue with us giving money and arms to countries to kill Muslims, imposing economic sanctions on Muslims, and bombing Muslim countries. He took issue with our bases on holy land and with our involvement in Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq and Iran.

"if the present injustice continues...it will inevitably move the battle to American soil" - Osama Bin Laden 1998 interview

"Bin Laden's grievance with the U.S. may have started in reaction to specific U.S. polices but it quickly became far deeper" - 9/11 commission report


HIM: 507, it is unlikely I will reassess my views of foreign policy/intel/military, especially in an area I worked for 10 years (counter-terrorism, Jihadi style) and 5 years in another area of the world (a cold warrior) anytime soon without info from trusted contacts in the business.

You have no idea what a tremendous job many dedicated and brave people have been doing to keep us this safe from the affects of terrorism. Islamic inspired terrorism. You just don't know. There has been some luck involved as well and it is a huge and expensive international effort.

Chalmers Johnson is a good and a smart man with great experience. Blow back is indeed part of the equation. More a symptom. A secondary cause, but a cause.

I understand what you say about motive. My check (day job) is from the Department of Corrections and I am an OIC and so I am involved in both inmate and employee investigations daily. Motive is important in putting a case together and can lead to a conviction in court. Jihadism is different. It is based on religion that is also an ideology. Islam is not just another mainstream religion. It is a barbarous ideology that is driven by a faith is a religion that demands ultimate sacrifice from many of it believer (1.2 B or so).

Reducing or even eliminating blow back through isolationist policy will not end Jihadism, it will encourage it as it is a sign of victory over a "morally and religiously weak adversary (the infidels).

The mosques, the Imams, the madrassas, the Islamic governments must be fundamentally changed or eliminated. That is an enormous undertaking. Yes, it will need to be accomplished with a reduced footprint in the region. It will take time and be difficult.

Ron Paul's position is not any better than that of GW or PrezBO though. I would unhesitatingly say Paul's is much wore. Wore than this? Impossible as it sounds, yes I believe so based on a decades worth on hands on experience in the region, in the field, a an operative. I typed a very long reply to Costa a month or two ago on how I would combat Jihadism and there ended up being largely agreement (I thought) and I was far far from Paul's plan. Fight smart, don't surrender.

1. Isolate them. Get off Islamic oil now!. Gert everyone off Islamic oil now.

2. Get proper involved diplomatically (deal from strength).

3. Fix the intel collection.

4. seal the borders at home.

5. Kill them immediately when they need killing.

6. Eliminate all their nuclear capacity by any necessary means.

7. Cut off their westerm money.

8. Get all radical Muslims out of the West (any mean necessary/yes, detention camps work).

9. Unreserved use of special teams, predators, cruise missiles, smart bombs, high altitude bombing when the threat is identified by solid intel.

Defend Irael's right to exist and current boundaries.

11. Eliminate all other WMD capacity. Leave no doubt in their mind that it is not worth even thinking about.

12. Privatise airline security (for the Jaker).

Just off the top of my head right now. I am sure you are wrong about this. I know that Ron Paul is wrong about this (as much a I otherwise admire him). I just hope you won't ever be dead wrong because of this. Being wrong on this carries dire consequences.

Blow back will go away when they cease to practice Islam as a barbaric faith. Is that even possible? Yes.



WTF do I say to that!!!

 

[doodle]

Ask him just one simple question, how many terror attacks have taken place against America in last 300 years before it started giving militarty aid to Israel/supporting oppressive dictators in mideast?

That should end the debate.

 

[oyarde]

If you would like to give a good valid example that nearly anyone could understand , I suggest giving an outline of our previous involvment in Iran.

 

[ExPatPaki]

Have you mentioned how America helped the Mujahideen jihadists in Afghanistan in the 80's?

Here's a good article from the Washington Post:

From U.S., the ABC's of Jihad

In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.

Anyways, this guy sounds deranged with genocidal fantasies towards the world's 1 billion Muslims.

 

[eleganz]

There is literally no point in debates like this, been in these sort of arguments many times and people never change, just like how we refuse to accept the government in this state, we demand freedom and liberty, others demand police state to feel safe from terrorism.

What I like to do is to show that America is picking up on RP's message and how popular he is getting, it helps to shed light from a different perspective, the 'liberty is inevitable' - sort of perspective.

Neocons get very riled up when hearing about RP, they play the isolationist card all day long no matter what you say, they're set in their ways and it is pretty sad to me but these people have spent their entire lives clenching onto the word of the mighty government and their media strong arm, to admit fault now is too shameful for them to bear, I can see right through it and so should you.

 

[AndrewD]

First thing I can read on this guy is that he has blood on his hands. I know, from personal experience. Let him hold his opinions, and just stay away from him.

 

[ConvertedRepublican]

WTF do I say to that!!!

5. Kill them immediately when they need killing.

And who determines who "needs killing"

6. Eliminate all their nuclear capacity by any necessary means.
Does that include using nuclear weapons ourselves?

8. Get all radical Muslims out of the West (any mean necessary/yes, detention camps work).
Ask this dickweed to provide documented historical evidence of this.

9. Unreserved use of special teams, predators, cruise missiles, smart bombs, high altitude bombing when the threat is identified by solid intel.

If they are not soldiers in uniform, what "judge and jury" determines they 'need killing'?

The person you are conversing with is a neo-Nazi, who with God's help, will never be in a position of authority.

 

[RonPaul507]

His reply to: How many Islamic terror attacks have taken place against the U.S. before we started giving military aid to Israel/ propping up and supporting oppressive dictators in the middle east?

"Well, you certainly are an impatient young man. I would run through my schedule with you, but I am afraid you might suffer a head injury when you fell down from your head spinning. OK, here we go. It seems you wanted to look at this through a prism of a crime investigation by your earlier post. Personally, I don't. I see it as an act of terror or war committed by Islamic extremists. First your way.

In US Criminal law, means, motive, and opportunity is a popular cultural summation of the three aspects of a crime needed to convince a jury of guilt in a criminal proceeding. Respectively, they refer to: the ability of the defendant to commit the crime (means), the reason the defendant had to commit the crime (motive), and whether or not the defendant had the chance to commit the crime (opportunity). (Thank you wiki)

1. Motive. You say blow back from the formation and support of Israel (1948) and the replacement of Prime Minister Mosaddegh with General Fazlollah Zahedi as Prime Minister in 1953. (BTW, The Shah was the Shah from 1941 to 1979.)

You have to do better. Our encounter with Islamic terrorism against America didn't start until the 70's. Your numbers don't work. Not at all.

2. I guess we don't even need to look at means and opportunity. Your motive failed.

I guess we need to consider my religious war next since that is the cause of Islamic terrorism against America and the non-Muslim world. Blow back is but a side effect.

BTW, I hate to do this because you won't be able to continue to support Ron Paul if you concede to the truth of the matter. Paul has it very wrong, very dangerouly wrong (Bush and Obama have it wrong too, but less dangerously so, even considering how it is helping to bankrupt America) You will just end up saying, "Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree."

I don't consider this finished."

 

[RonPaul507]

The person you are conversing with is a neo-Nazi, who with God's help, will never be in a position of authority.

I swear I said he works at a MN state correctional facility...I know WOW

 

[HOLLYWOOD]

This may help a bit

 

[angelatc]

You have to do better. Our encounter with Islamic terrorism against America didn't start until the 70's. Your numbers don't work. Not at all.

Really? We didn't take out the Prime Minster and replace him with the Shah in the 50's?

 

[malkusm]

Islam is not just another mainstream religion. It is a barbarous ideology that is driven by a faith is a religion that demands ultimate sacrifice from many of it believer (1.2 B or so).

Unfortunately, bigotry is one of the least rational forms of thought. I'd be very surprised if you were able to change his mind until he stops believing that all people of Islamic faith are "barbarous."

 

[sarahdeez]

I commend you on having a very important conversation with this guy. These are things that need discussing. The American people want to feel safe. RP needs to be able to ensure that. I liked how he was for "getting" Bin Laden but not for a full out war. He felt that the "bad guy" could have been delt with cheaper, more effeciently, and with less loss of life than what we did. This guy feels he has an inside knowledge and maybe he does but things are not always as they seem. I believe we are threatened and I believe that we must protect ourselves, but I also believe that things are misrepresented. I mean we fund both sides of a civil war/unrest in another country? There is no explaining that.

PS To help you understand his point of view: these men (military, law enforcement) HAVE to believe in the cause (I'm not saying it is just). How else could they do what they do? They will not let the thought enter their minds that their friends are dying (or even spending a year away from their families) in the fight against terror for no reason. And it's hard to blame them for that.

 

[RonPaul507]

More gold from this guy:

not possible that it took 20-30 years for the anger to build and people to organize and come up with a crude, evil solution to their problem? If they didn't immediately start using terrorism, it couldn't be part of the cause?

Him: "Perhaps it is possible, but it isn't the case. It is hatred based on an extreme interpretation of the Qur'an. Pure and simple. It was amplified by the rise of Qutbism and in another segment driven by a fanatical desire for a global Caliphate. It is common knowledge of the Muslim Brotherhood's "100 year plan" to assume control of America. They do believe they have made progress equal to being at year 20 in the plan.

You can NOT understand the situation by thinking like a secular or like a Christian American. It requires a completely different mindset to even begin to understand what is going on. That is how so many good people have been fooled.

Why is the voice of the "moderate Muslim" population so muted about the Islamic based terrorism? Why are they so ineffective in combating the radical movement? They are in quiet agreement and you and Ron Paul are in their gunsights and political plans. Common sense does not prevail in the case of understanding this real threat. Paul has attempted to apply common sense to the terrorism. It doesn't work, but is attractive if you don't know better.

Blow back is a symptom, not a cause. It would be beautifully simple if it was."

 

[doodle]

Tired old neocon talking points he is regurgitating. The guy sounds like an EDL/Pamela Geller type neocon. Ask him, does he believe in racial equality between arabs and jews or one is more supremacist than the other? Does he believe in US giving military aid to Israel to occupy Palestinians?

 

[Acala]

You probably have very little chance of helping this guy. But the limited successes I have had with those who really buy into the "they hate us for our freedom" BS is economic. Ask him how we are going to pay for it. And don't let him wriggle out. He will probably say something like "we have no choice". But that is not an answer. That won't pay the bills.

So, where will the money come from? A draft? With no pay? Okay, that will pay for a tiny fraction of it (assuming you didn't have a revolution). Who is going to pay for all the weapons, vehicles, ammunition, fuel, etc? Slave labor in the factories? A full-blown fascist state?

He might say "reduce waste" but that is a non-answer as well.

 

[Praetorius]

More gold from this guy:
Him: "Perhaps it is possible, but it isn't the case. It is hatred based on an extreme interpretation of the Qur'an. Pure and simple. It was amplified by the rise of Qutbism and in another segment driven by a fanatical desire for a global Caliphate.

Just on a side note, and I have by no means looked into Qutb in depth at all, but perhaps I need to - it sounds like Qutb would actually have imposed a moderating view on extremist islam anyway:
""For Islam does not desire the freedom of worship for its followers only, rather it affirms this right for all the different religions and it tasks the Muslims to fight and defend this right for all people and it [even] allows them to fight under this flag, the flag which guarantees the freedom of worship for the adherents of all other religions...so that it is realised that it is a free world order..." (Nahwa Mujtami' Islaamee p.105)

There's some back-and-forth on the positions I'm reading about qutbism, but regardless... - so, despite islam being a terroristic monstrosity hell bent on ruling earth and killing infidels, it took them until the 70s to screw up their disgust with westernism enough to start acting as such, and the tolerance (and in fact positive relationships, frequently) of jewish and christian populations in predominately muslim nations is/was just some kind of tolerance smokescreen to mask their true intents - and they figured they could only openly express such after political confrontations with the west and zionists finally arose via the 'occupation' of palestine/israel (and something resembling apartheid along with it) and the underhanded dealings of the CIA in the shah fiasco amongst other matters provided an excuse to do so?

Good lord, will these people ever realize that the vast majority of anything resembling extremist islam seems to always be fairly swiftly quashed by moderate islam when there isn't some sort of political provocation taking place? And heck, even during the crusades, the battle behavior of the muslims and treatment of POWs was, to what little bit I've heard, usually a good deal more classy and civilized than that of the crusaders themselves.

Criminy.

 

[hard@work]

I'm not seeing a problem. Except for detention camps, that's psychotic. But it sounds to me like this guy should vote for Dr. Paul.

1. Isolate them. Get off Islamic oil now!. Gert everyone off Islamic oil now.

Agreed, the best way to do this is to allow the free market to function in energy. Without welfare to oil companies and military protectionism the US energy market will move away from mid-east oil.

2. Get proper involved diplomatically (deal from strength).

Agreed, and without need for mid-east oil this will become mostly unnecessary. Regional issues will be handled where they should be, regionally. We will be able to trade freely without political involvement.

3. Fix the intel collection.

Agreed, by eliminating the bureaucratic waste created by the Bush admin through homeland security and focus resources squandered in military adventurism back into covert operations and security.

Marque and Reprisal.

4. seal the borders at home.

Agreed, anyone that's actually been to the border knows they are not just open - they are wide open. This can be done without fencing Americans in.

5. Kill them immediately when they need killing.

Agreed, marque and reprisal.

6. Eliminate all their nuclear capacity by any necessary means.

Respectfully disagree, they have a right to peaceful nuclear power. We should honor the treaties we signed regarding this matter.

7. Cut off their westerm money.

Agreed, there should be no money going to the enemies of Israel. This money props up puppet dictators which causes the blowback in the first place.

8. Get all radical Muslims out of the West (any mean necessary/yes, detention camps work).

Agreed, we can do this easily and still respect the 1st and 4th amendments and due process of law. Without government waste going towards the wars overseas and at home (drugs, etc) we can focus all our efforts on what really matters here.

9. Unreserved use of special teams, predators, cruise missiles, smart bombs, high altitude bombing when the threat is identified by solid intel.

Agreed, we can use letters of marque and reprisal. We do not need to violate sovereignty or circumvent congress to achieve this.

Defend Irael's right to exist and current boundaries.

Agreed, we need to mind our own business on Israel's borders and allow them to make their own definitions as well as their own military decisions.

11. Eliminate all other WMD capacity. Leave no doubt in their mind that it is not worth even thinking about.

Agreed, we should work for nuclear disarmament globally including our own stockpile. Eliminate the perception of need and disarmament is a possibility.

12. Privatise airline security (for the Jaker).

Agreed, if we had more respect for the 2nd amendment 9/11 couldn't have happened.

 

[ProIndividual]

8. Get all radical Muslims out of the West (any mean necessary/yes, detention camps work).

Just stop debating him, he is a statist nationalist whackjob sociopath...no wonder his Nazi rear worked in the government where they draw false statistical conclusions and LOVE to use their monopoly on violence and coercion.

Copy and paste him this, beg him to read the book, then leave him alone:

Last month, Scott McConnell caught up with Associate Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, whose book on suicide terrorism, Dying to Win, is beginning to receive wide notice. Pape has found that the most common American perceptions about who the terrorists are and what motivates them are off by a wide margin. In his office is the world’s largest database of information about suicide terrorists, rows and rows of manila folders containing articles and biographical snippets in dozens of languages compiled by Pape and teams of graduate students, a trove of data that has been sorted and analyzed and which underscores the great need for reappraising the Bush administration’s current strategy. Below are excerpts from a conversation with the man who knows more about suicide terrorists than any other American.


The American Conservative: Your new book, Dying to Win, has a subtitle: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Can you just tell us generally on what the book is based, what kind of research went into it, and what your findings were?

Robert Pape: Over the past two years, I have collected the first complete database of every suicide-terrorist attack around the world from 1980 to early 2004. This research is conducted not only in English but also in native-language sources—Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Tamil, and others—so that we can gather information not only from newspapers but also from products from the terrorist community. The terrorists are often quite proud of what they do in their local communities, and they produce albums and all kinds of other information that can be very helpful to understand suicide-terrorist attacks.



This wealth of information creates a new picture about what is motivating suicide terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism is not as closely associated with suicide terrorism as many people think. The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.

This is a Marxist group, a completely secular group that draws from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of the country. They invented the famous suicide vest for their suicide assassination of Rajiv Ghandi in May 1991. The Palestinians got the idea of the suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers.

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.


TAC: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush’s policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don’t have to fight them here.

RP: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.


Since 1990, the United States has stationed tens of thousands of ground troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and that is the main mobilization appeal of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. People who make the argument that it is a good thing to have them attacking us over there are missing that suicide terrorism is not a supply-limited phenomenon where there are just a few hundred around the world willing to do it because they are religious fanatics. It is a demand-driven phenomenon. That is, it is driven by the presence of foreign forces on the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. The operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorism and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life.

TAC: If we were to back up a little bit before the invasion of Iraq to what happened before 9/11, what was the nature of the agitprop that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were putting out to attract people?

RP: Osama bin Laden’s speeches and sermons run 40 and 50 pages long. They begin by calling tremendous attention to the presence of tens of thousands of American combat forces on the Arabian Peninsula.

In 1996, he went on to say that there was a grand plan by the United States—that the Americans were going to use combat forces to conquer Iraq, break it into three pieces, give a piece of it to Israel so that Israel could enlarge its country, and then do the same thing to Saudi Arabia. As you can see, we are fulfilling his prediction, which is of tremendous help in his mobilization appeals.

TAC: The fact that we had troops stationed on the Arabian Peninsula was not a very live issue in American debate at all. How many Saudis and other people in the Gulf were conscious of it?

RP: We would like to think that if we could keep a low profile with our troops that it would be okay to station them in foreign countries. The truth is, we did keep a fairly low profile. We did try to keep them away from Saudi society in general, but the key issue with American troops is their actual combat power. Tens of thousands of American combat troops, married with air power, is a tremendously powerful tool.

Now, of course, today we have 150,000 troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and we are more in control of the Arabian Peninsula than ever before.

I'd like to note we REMOVED those troops, or most of them since this interview, in accordance with the 9/11 commission's RECOMMENDATIONS.

Continuing:

TAC: If you were to break down causal factors, how much weight would you put on a cultural rejection of the West and how much weight on the presence of American troops on Muslim territory?

RP: The evidence shows that the presence of American troops is clearly the pivotal factor driving suicide terrorism.


If Islamic fundamentalism were the pivotal factor, then we should see some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world, like Iran, which has 70 million people—three times the population of Iraq and three times the population of Saudi Arabia—with some of the most active groups in suicide terrorism against the United States. However, there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Iran, and we have no evidence that there are any suicide terrorists in Iraq from Iran.

Sudan is a country of 21 million people. Its government is extremely Islamic fundamentalist. The ideology of Sudan was so congenial to Osama bin Laden that he spent three years in Sudan in the 1990s. Yet there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Sudan.

I have the first complete set of data on every al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from 1995 to early 2004, and they are not from some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world. Two thirds are from the countries where the United States has stationed heavy combat troops since 1990.



Another point in this regard is Iraq itself. Before our invasion, Iraq never had a suicide-terrorist attack in its history. Never. Since our invasion, suicide terrorism has been escalating rapidly with 20 attacks in 2003, 48 in 2004, and over 50 in just the first five months of 2005. Every year that the United States has stationed 150,000 combat troops in Iraq, suicide terrorism has doubled.

TAC: So your assessment is that there are more suicide terrorists or potential suicide terrorists today than there were in March 2003?

RP: I have collected demographic data from around the world on the 462 suicide terrorists since 1980 who completed the mission, actually killed themselves. This information tells us that most are walk-in volunteers. Very few are criminals. Few are actually longtime members of a terrorist group. For most suicide terrorists, their first experience with violence is their very own suicide-terrorist attack.

There is no evidence there were any suicide-terrorist organizations lying in wait in Iraq before our invasion. What is happening is that the suicide terrorists have been produced by the invasion.

TAC: Do we know who is committing suicide terrorism in Iraq? Are they primarily Iraqis or walk-ins from other countries in the region?

RP: Our best information at the moment is that the Iraqi suicide terrorists are coming from two groups—Iraqi Sunnis and Saudis—the two populations most vulnerable to transformation by the presence of large American combat troops on the Arabian Peninsula. This is perfectly consistent with the strategic logic of suicide terrorism.

TAC: Does al-Qaeda have the capacity to launch attacks on the United States, or are they too tied down in Iraq? Or have they made a strategic decision not to attack the United States, and if so, why?

RP: Al-Qaeda appears to have made a deliberate decision not to attack the United States in the short term. We know this not only from the pattern of their attacks but because we have an actual al-Qaeda planning document found by Norwegian intelligence. The document says that al-Qaeda should not try to attack the continent of the United States in the short term but instead should focus its energies on hitting America’s allies in order to try to split the coalition.

What the document then goes on to do is analyze whether they should hit Britain, Poland, or Spain. It concludes that they should hit Spain just before the March 2004 elections because, and I am quoting almost verbatim: Spain could not withstand two, maximum three, blows before withdrawing from the coalition, and then others would fall like dominoes.

That is exactly what happened. Six months after the document was produced, al-Qaeda attacked Spain in Madrid. That caused Spain to withdraw from the coalition. Others have followed. So al-Qaeda certainly has demonstrated the capacity to attack and in fact they have done over 15 suicide-terrorist attacks since 2002, more than all the years before 9/11 combined. Al-Qaeda is not weaker now. Al-Qaeda is stronger.

TAC: What would constitute a victory in the War on Terror or at least an improvement in the American situation?

RP: For us, victory means not sacrificing any of our vital interests while also not having Americans vulnerable to suicide-terrorist attacks. In the case of the Persian Gulf, that means we should pursue a strategy that secures our interest in oil but does not encourage the rise of a new generation of suicide terrorists.

In the 1970s and the 1980s, the United States secured its interest in oil without stationing a single combat soldier on the Arabian Peninsula. Instead, we formed an alliance with Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which we can now do again. We relied on numerous aircraft carriers off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and naval air power now is more effective not less. We also built numerous military bases so that we could move large numbers of ground forces to the region quickly if a crisis emerged.

That strategy, called “offshore balancing,” worked splendidly against Saddam Hussein in 1990 and is again our best strategy to secure our interest in oil while preventing the rise of more suicide terrorists.

TAC: Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders also talked about the “Crusaders-Zionist alliance,” and I wonder if that, even if we weren’t in Iraq, would not foster suicide terrorism. Even if the policy had helped bring about a Palestinian state, I don’t think that would appease the more hardcore opponents of Israel.

RP: I not only study the patterns of where suicide terrorism has occurred but also where it hasn’t occurred. Not every foreign occupation has produced suicide terrorism. Why do some and not others? Here is where religion matters, but not quite in the way most people think. In virtually every instance where an occupation has produced a suicide-terrorist campaign, there has been a religious difference between the occupier and the occupied community. That is true not only in places such as Lebanon and in Iraq today but also in Sri Lanka, where it is the Sinhala Buddhists who are having a dispute with the Hindu Tamils.

When there is a religious difference between the occupier and the occupied, that enables terrorist leaders to demonize the occupier in especially vicious ways. Now, that still requires the occupier to be there. Absent the presence of foreign troops, Osama bin Laden could make his arguments but there wouldn’t be much reality behind them. The reason that it is so difficult for us to dispute those arguments is because we really do have tens of thousands of combat soldiers sitting on the Arabian Peninsula.

TAC: Has the next generation of anti-American suicide terrorists already been created? Is it too late to wind this down, even assuming your analysis is correct and we could de-occupy Iraq?

RP: Many people worry that once a large number of suicide terrorists have acted that it is impossible to wind it down. The history of the last 20 years, however, shows the opposite. Once the occupying forces withdraw from the homeland territory of the terrorists, they often stop—and often on a dime.

In Lebanon, for instance, there were 41 suicide-terrorist attacks from 1982 to 1986, and after the U.S. withdrew its forces, France withdrew its forces, and then Israel withdrew to just that six-mile buffer zone of Lebanon, they virtually ceased. They didn’t completely stop, but there was no campaign of suicide terrorism. Once Israel withdrew from the vast bulk of Lebanese territory, the suicide terrorists did not follow Israel to Tel Aviv.

This is also the pattern of the second Intifada with the Palestinians. As Israel is at least promising to withdraw from Palestinian-controlled territory (in addition to some other factors), there has been a decline of that ferocious suicide-terrorist campaign. This is just more evidence that withdrawal of military forces really does diminish the ability of the terrorist leaders to recruit more suicide terrorists.

That doesn’t mean that the existing suicide terrorists will not want to keep going. I am not saying that Osama bin Laden would turn over a new leaf and suddenly vote for George Bush. There will be a tiny number of people who are still committed to the cause, but the real issue is not whether Osama bin Laden exists. It is whether anybody listens to him. That is what needs to come to an end for Americans to be safe from suicide terrorism.

TAC: There have been many kinds of non-Islamic suicide terrorists, but have there been Christian suicide terrorists?

RP: Not from Christian groups per se, but in Lebanon in the 1980s, of those suicide attackers, only eight were Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were Communists and Socialists. Three were Christians.

TAC: Has the IRA used suicide terrorism?

RP: The IRA did not. There were IRA members willing to commit suicide—the famous hunger strike was in 1981. What is missing in the IRA case is not the willingness to commit suicide, to kill themselves, but the lack of a suicide-terrorist attack where they try to kill others.

If you look at the pattern of violence in the IRA, almost all of the killing is front-loaded to the 1970s and then trails off rather dramatically as you get through the mid-1980s through the 1990s. There is a good reason for that, which is that the British government, starting in the mid-1980s, began to make numerous concessions to the IRA on the basis of its ordinary violence. In fact, there were secret negotiations in the 1980s, which then led to public negotiations, which then led to the Good Friday Accords. If you look at the pattern of the IRA, this is a case where they actually got virtually everything that they wanted through ordinary violence.

The purpose of a suicide-terrorist attack is not to die. It is the kill, to inflict the maximum number of casualties on the target society in order to compel that target society to put pressure on its government to change policy. If the government is already changing policy, then the whole point of suicide terrorism, at least the way it has been used for the last 25 years, doesn’t come up.

TAC: Are you aware of any different strategic decision made by al-Qaeda to change from attacking American troops or ships stationed at or near the Gulf to attacking American civilians in the United States?

RP: I wish I could say yes because that would then make the people reading this a lot more comfortable.

The fact is not only in the case of al-Qaeda, but in suicide-terrorist campaigns in general, we don’t see much evidence that suicide-terrorist groups adhere to a norm of attacking military targets in some circumstances and civilians in others.

In fact, we often see that suicide-terrorist groups routinely attack both civilian and military targets, and often the military targets are off-duty policemen who are unsuspecting. They are not really prepared for battle.

The reasons for the target selection of suicide terrorists appear to be much more based on operational rather than normative criteria. They appear to be looking for the targets where they can maximize the number of casualties.

In the case of the West Bank, for instance, there is a pattern where Hamas and Islamic Jihad use ordinary guerrilla attacks, not suicide attacks, mainly to attack settlers. They use suicide attacks to penetrate into Israel proper. Over 75 percent of all the suicide attacks in the second Intifada were against Israel proper and only 25 percent on the West Bank itself.

TAC: What do you think the chances are of a weapon of mass destruction being used in an American city?

RP: I think it depends not exclusively, but heavily, on how long our combat forces remain in the Persian Gulf. The central motive for anti-American terrorism, suicide terrorism, and catastrophic terrorism is response to foreign occupation, the presence of our troops. The longer our forces stay on the ground in the Arabian Peninsula, the greater the risk of the next 9/11, whether that is a suicide attack, a nuclear attack, or a biological attack.

Source: July 18, 2005 Issue
Copyright © 2011 The American Conservative: http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/jul/18/00017/


That's the best you can do for the Nazi. And he is a fascist and bigoted fear-wallowing Nazi, FTW. And the people who agree with that statement of his, you are Nazis too. Muslims are NOT the cause of suicide terrorism...and we don't kill every idiot in a white robe, even though the KKK has been a Congressionally deemed terrorist organization (lynchings, assasinations of public officials) since the 1800s. You CANNOT kill away or ban bad ideas, no matter how violent or repulsive. You marginalize and ignore the ideas until they have no legitimacy. You do NOT make them a victim of persecution and add a recruitment tool to their arsenal. As Thomas Jefferson advized, you do not police whacky preachers who preach hate and violence, you police those who act upon the radical message. Harm is what you police...and the possibility, or even the "near certitude" that such a harm may occur is not good enough to violate this logical approach. The KKK no longer holds large influence, and yet still exists. Most of their actions today are nonviolent, albeit hateful. Until you are prepared to treat these inbred retards with as much unConstitutional vigor in policing as you do muslims, I'd suggest you're a racist or religious bigot.

And when you do want to use such tactics evenly, not in a uneven hypocritical and bigoted way, I call you a fascist. It's not any better to use internment camps on muslims than it is on whites, blacks, hispanics, asians, et cetera. The real solution isn't bigotry or fascism; it's marginalization (ignoring them), and policing ONLY those who act out, plan to act out, or intend harm but do not achieve it (like attempted murder). The other two methods just will swell their numbers, as it is a perfect recruitment tool for the terrorist seeking sympathy among it's target audience.