At his new blog, Matt Yglesias tells us the latest from Robert Pape, who wrote the book on suicide terrorism. Having compiled a database on every incident of suicide terrorism from 1980 to 2003, Pape has found that “nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific
secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw
military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their
homeland.” Matt tells us:
in yesterday’s presentationhe had some new material where you look at what actually gets said in recruiting materials.
There’s nothing about a Caliphate and very little about the content of
Islamic theology. There’s a lot of stuff about foreign soldiers and the
civilian casualties Western and Israeli forces have inflicted here and
there. This is the stuff that, in al-Qaeda’s judgment, needs to be
emphasized to get people to sign up.