• Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none. – Thomas Jefferson

Terrorism

Foreign occupation causes hatred

Posted by Sukrit Sabhlok on 11th May 2011 11:19pm

David Aaronovitch (The Australian, 3/12/2008) appears to have accepted the pernicious myth that ideology is the key factor driving Muslim terrorists. But the most important cause of terrorism – and suicide terrorism in particular – is foreign occupation.

This has been shown comprehensively by University of Chicago Professor Robert Pape in his book Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Pape’s work has been peer-reviewed in the top political science journals in America and has met with much acclaim. Until someone is prepared to demonstrate flaws in Pape’s data, we should consider the possibility that actions do have consequences; that the favourable light in which we perceive our own governments is not how residents of other countries perceive them.

In that sense, much of the terrorism we see today – although perhaps not the Mumbai attack, because Pape’s thesis is restricted to suicide attacks – is indeed the ‘fault’ of the United States and Britain, countries which have a history of occupying other countries. It is imperative that we try and move beyond speculative assertions about the causes of terrorism, and consider the empirical data.

The Fear Factor
By Ron Paul  
Tue, 08/12/2009 - 12:14am
Sat, 30/06/2007 - 1:00am

While fear itself is not always the product of irrationality, once experienced it tends to lead away from reason, especially if the experience is extreme in duration or intensity. When people are fearful they tend to be willing to irrationally surrender their rights.

Thus, fear is a threat to rational liberty. The psychology of fear is an essential component of those who would have us believe we must increasingly rely on the elite who manage the apparatus of the central government.

The statement “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” has been attributed to Benjamin Franklin. It is clear, people seek out safety and security when they are in a state of fear, and it is the result of this psychological state that often leads to the surrender of liberty.

Gitmo torture worse since Obama took office
By Anthony Coralluzzo  
Sun, 08/03/2009 - 10:37pm
Sun, 08/03/2009 - 10:37pm

In an interview with British Newspaper, The Mail, former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed claims that since Obama was inaugurated the torture and

That Pre-9/11 Mindset: Meet the New Normal, Same as the Old Normal
By Roderick T. Long  
Sat, 07/03/2009 - 11:32pm
Sat, 07/03/2009 - 11:32pm

Critics of the current régime's so-called "War on Terror" are often accused of having a "September 10th" or "pre-9/11" mindset. (Our ever-articulate Prince President garbled both descriptions into the phrase "pre-September 10th mentality" during the first debate.) The suggestion is that everyone's worldview should have been radically transformed by the events of September 11th; anyone whose worldview wasn't so altered, anyone who continues to favour diplomacy over a resort to military force, must simply be blind to reality.

But there's a problem with this argument: it assumes that everyone's worldview needed changing. After all, any worldview that was radically altered by the September 11th attacks must have been radically mistaken to begin with. But anyone whose understanding of the world was substantially correct would not have had his or her overall view of things shaken by those events.