This Week:

Quote of the Week

Suicide Terror: History and Common Beliefs

Greetings,

The just-concluded Nygaard Notes series on universal health care prompted a number of people to write in and say how useful it was to see this idea explained in terms they could understand. This is great to hear! Some of you asked specific questions about some of the many points I did not fully explain in the series, and I’ve tried to answer your questions personally. For the rest of you who may also have unanswered questions, I encourage you to go to the websites I recommended, where you will very likely find the answers you seek.

I said last week that I would offer “the final installment of this health care series” this week, and that I would “talk about why health care is such a great issue to organize around.” Besides being very strange in the grammatical sense, that sentence was also incorrect in the sense that I am not doing any such thing this week. Looking back, I realized that I had made the point about organizing well enough in Notes #238, in my introductory article “Health Care 2004: Needs Great, Failure Obvious, Solution Clear.” I do have some further thoughts on this facet of health care transformation, but I will try to publish them elsewhere.

In the words of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, “And now, for something completely different...” This week I have decided to publish one article only, and to use that article to focus in on the imperial adventure that we know as the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Not only is it unusual for me to publish an entire edition on a single issue, but it’s also unusual for me to talk about Iraq. In recent months I have thought that there has been plenty of good information about that spectacle to be found in the various media, both mainstream and alternative. So, I have refrained, for the most part, from adding to the chorus. But I thought it would be useful this week to look kind of closely at one particular aspect of the current situation: the phenomenon of suicide terror attacks. They are happening a lot more, and are not well-understood, in my opinion.

So, have I learned my lesson about saying what will be in next week’s issue? Yes, I have, so I will tell you that I’m not sure what will be in here next week. But, I strongly suspect that we’ll have a return of the semi-regular feature “A Stroll Through the News with Nygaard.” Or, maybe not. (How’s that for hedging my bets?)

Until next week (whatever it brings),

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

Propaganda, By Any Other Name...

From a February 5, 2004 article in the New York Times (“All The News That’s Fit To Print”) headlined, “U.S. Image Abroad Will Take Years to Repair, Official Testifies,” come the following words:

“Margaret D. Tutwiler, in her first public appearance as the State Department official in charge of public diplomacy, acknowledged Wednesday that America's standing abroad had deteriorated to such an extent that 'it will take us many years of hard, focused work’ to restore it.

“Representative Jim Kolbe, an Arizona Republican, cited polls showing that only 15 percent of Indonesians, 7 percent of Saudis and 15 percent of Turks have a favorable image of America —
despite their governments' friendly relations with Washington.

“[Tutwiler] said she was determined to work within the existing budget of about $600 million for
worldwide public diplomacy, which includes a wide range of efforts, including exchange programs,
partnerships between American embassies and local institutions, distributing textbooks
and supplying textbooks to local schools.”

Suicide Terror: History and Common Beliefs

In the wake of the suicide bombings in northern Iraq last Sunday that killed more than 100 people, I’d like to say a word about suicide terror.

Specifically, I’m going to talk about a recently-published study on the subject that has not received much attention in the media. The study is called “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” and it was published by political scientist Robert Pape this past August. The points it makes have very great importance for those of us who want to see greater democracy in the world, as well as for those who wish to feel more secure here in the United States.

The Case of Turkey

One of the surprising things this study found is that “all suicide terrorist campaigns in the last two decades have been aimed at democracies, which make more suitable targets from the terrorists’ point of view.” I’ll say more about this in a moment, but consider the explanatory power of this point in regard to Sunday’s suicide bombings in Kurdistan. For those who haven’t heard, a pair of suicide bombings were carried out on February 1 in the Northern Iraqi town of Erbil. At least 109 people were killed, “the biggest confirmed death toll in any insurgent attack since the start of the Iraq conflict last March,” according to the Associated Press. And this in “a part of the country that had been relatively unscathed by violence” up until now.

The AP reported further that “Among the dead [in northern Iraq] were many key leaders of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the two U.S.-backed parties that run the Kurdish autonomous region of northern Iraq.” Note that the targets were “U.S.-backed parties.” Now consider what Pape said in his report last August:

“The Kurds, which straddle Turkey and Iraq, illustrate the point that suicide terrorist campaigns are more likely to be targeted against democracies than authoritarian regimes. Although Iraq has been far more brutal toward its Kurdish population than has Turkey, violent Kurdish groups have used suicide attacks exclusively against democratic Turkey and not against the authoritarian regime in Iraq.”

Now, of course, the part of Kurdistan that happens to be in Iraq is being occupied by the democratic nation known as the United States and the political parties it “backs” (Ed. note: Take a moment to look up the word “quisling” in your dictionary). And now, we suddenly begin to see the phenomenon of suicide bombings. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, yet it seems to surprise the U.S. media.

United Statesians have been so overwhelmed by the idea and the reality of September 11, 2001 that they forget the fact that suicide attacks have been around for awhile. Robert Pape spent a year compiling a database on every suicide bombing and attack around the world from 1980 to 2001—the only such database ever done, surprisingly enough. Pape put together his database and looked to see if there were any patterns to be seen. His reasoning seems sound enough: If we understand why people commit suicide terror—“the most aggressive form of terrorism”—then we might have an idea of what course of action to take that might reduce the number of these acts.

Challenging Common Beliefs

What Pape found in his historical study goes against almost all the common beliefs that I’m aware of in this country in regard to suicide bombers. United Statesians have been encouraged by their current leaders to reduce the complex phenomenon of suicide terror to a simple problem with a series of simple explanations: There are crazed, hateful individuals “out there” who want simply to hurt us. “They” are bad, fanatical religious zealots whose attacks are “targeted at tolerance, freedom and civilization.” “We” are good people, lovers of democracy. The only thing “we” can do with crazy, bad, fanatical people is to find them and eliminate them. The path to follow seems clear to many in this country: we need a strong police and military response, in effect an endless war of good against evil.

Pape’s study reveals a quite different explanation for suicide terror. The results were published in the American Political Science Review last August, under the title “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.” I’m going to list what I think are some of the most common beliefs about suicide terror in this country, and follow each one with some of the history revealed by Pape’s study. See what you think.

MOST U.S.ers BELIEVE: “Islamic fundamentalism” is the leading cause of suicide attacks.
THE HISTORY SUGGESTS: As Pape pointed out in an opinion piece in the New York Times of September 22, “[the] presumed connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism is wrongheaded, and it may be encouraging domestic and foreign policies that are likely to worsen America's situation.” He adds that the leading instigator of suicide attacks is the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion. The Tigers have committed 75 of the 188 suicide attacks perpetrated since 1980.

MOST U.S.ers BELIEVE: Suicide terrorism has no point beyond killing.
THE HISTORY SUGGESTS: “Most suicide terrorism is undertaken as a strategic effort directed toward achieving particular political goals... The main purpose of suicide terrorism is to use the threat of punishment to coerce a target government to change policy, especially to cause democratic states to withdraw forces from territory terrorists view as their homeland.”

MOST U.S.ers BELIEVE: Suicide terrorism is the work of irrational individuals.
THE HISTORY SUGGESTS: “[Suicide terror] is not simply the product of irrational individuals or an expression of fanatical hatreds... [N]early all suicide attacks occur in organized, coherent campaigns, not as isolated or randomly timed incidents...” and “The record of suicide terrorism from 1980 to 2001 exhibits tendencies in the timing, goals, and targets of attack that are consistent with...strategic logic but not with irrational or fanatical behavior...”

MOST U.S.ers BELIEVE: Suicide terrorism is random, and can strike anyone, anywhere.
THE HISTORY SUGGESTS: “[T]here have been 188 separate suicide terrorist attacks between 1980 and 2001. Of these, 179, or 95%, were parts of organized, coherent campaigns, while only nine were isolated or random events...’ And, “The vast majority of suicide terrorist attacks are not isolated or random acts by individual fanatics but, rather, occur in clusters as part of a larger campaign by an organized group to achieve a specific political goal. Groups using suicide terrorism consistently announce specific political goals and stop suicide attacks when those goals have been fully or partially achieved.”

And, “Suicide terrorism is more likely to be employed against states with democratic political systems than authoritarian governments for several reasons. First, democracies are often thought to be especially vulnerable to coercive punishment. Second, suicide terrorism is a tool of the weak, which means that, regardless of how much punishment the terrorists inflict, the target state almost always has the capacity to retaliate with far more extreme punishment or even by exterminating the terrorists’ community. Finally, suicide attacks may also be harder to organize or publicize in authoritarian police states, although these possibilities are weakened by the fact that weak authoritarian states are also not targets.”

MOST U.S.ers BELIEVE: Suicide terrorists only attack innocent civilians.
THE HISTORY SUGGESTS: “Although attacks against civilians are often the most salient to Western observers, actually every suicide terrorist campaign in the past two decades has included attacks directly against the foreign military forces in the country, and most have been waged by guerrilla organizations that also use more conventional methods of attack against those forces.”

MOST U.S.ers BELIEVE: Suicide terrorists are different, and less concerned with human life, than “we” are.
THE HISTORY SUGGESTS: “Although the element of ‘suicide’ is novel and the pain inflicted on civilians is often spectacular and gruesome, the heart of the strategy of suicide terrorism is the same as the coercive logic used by states when they employ air power or economic sanctions to punish an adversary: to cause mounting civilian costs to overwhelm the target state’s interest in the issue in dispute and so to cause it to concede the terrorists’ political demands.”

Here is one additional point, not necessarily connected to well-established “common beliefs:”

* “Suicide terrorism does not occur in the same circumstances as military coercion used by states, and these structural differences help to explain the logic of the strategy. In virtually all instances of international military coercion, the coercer is the stronger state and the target is the weaker state; otherwise, the coercer would likely be deterred or simply unable to execute the threatened military operations. Suicide terrorism (and terrorism in general) occurs under the reverse structural conditions. In suicide terrorism, the coercer is the weaker actor and the target is the stronger.”

The very idea that there is a “strategic logic” to suicide terror likely appears quite radical to many United Statesians. For people who choose to forget that these terrorists are human beings, the idea that their attacks might have a logic and reflect a political strategy may seem ludicrous. But the fact remains—as much as we may abhor the idea of suicide terror and as difficult as it may be to understand—these acts are committed by human beings.

If Pape’s analysis has any validity, consider what it does to the common interpretations such as this one, which appeared in the next-day report of the New York Times on this week’s bombings in Kurdistan, which said “The attacks scarred a part of [Iraq] that had been relatively unscathed by violence during the American occupation, underscoring the argument that Iraq might be too unstable to hold direct elections, officials and experts said.” Using Pape’s analysis, this “spin” is almost the opposite of the most plausible interpretation, which would be that the occupation itself is the major cause of the terror.

To understand suicide terror is not to condone or forgive it. But what would it mean if we were to accept what Pape’s study suggests—that suicide terror is an attempt by the weak to influence the strong, arising primarily as a response to perceived injustice related to a loss of sovereignty and self-determination? For one thing, we might see that our primary response—an attack against and occupation of Iraq, a country that, as far as we know, posed no imminent threat to our own—should be expected to INCREASE the risk of further suicide attacks against the U.S. and its outposts.

Furthermore, we might have to consider that the neo-conservative agenda of a New American Empire backed by immense military power not only cannot protect us from an endless string of attacks by our weaker adversaries, but may actually create the conditions under which our weaker adversaries will perpetually be inspired to, in the President’s words, “Bring it on.” ?