interesting article
Jul. 15th, 2005 11:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidon...from my local paper, original source Washington Post (Robert Pape is a former Dartmouth professor, thus the local connection):
Full article...
War on Terror Is Misguided, Professsor Says
By Caryle Murphy
The Washington Post
Washington -- Washington was its summer muggiest as Robert A. Pape made his rounds. He was on his second trip to the capital in a week. The first time, he had briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill. On this day, there was a breakfast discussion with 50 people at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, then a visit to Voice of America. By the time he arrived for an interview, lugging a huge plastic binder with his cherished statistics on suicide terrorists, Pape was perspiring profusely.
Pape's world is a little topsy-turvy right now because the loquacious University of Chicago political science scholar is hollering “No!” to some of the conventional wisdom underpinning U.S. foreign policy. Specifically, Pape contends in his controversial new book, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, that U.S. policymakers misread why suicide terrorists do what they do.
“Suicide terrorism is not so much committed by religious fanatics looking for a quick trip to paradise as it is by a variety of secular and religious individuals who fear that their societies will be unalterably transformed by a religiously motivated occupier,” says Pape, who was sought out last week by CNN and Fox in the wake of the London terrorist attacks.
The “presumed connection” between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism has fueled the U.S. foreign policy project of transforming Muslim societies into secular democracies, sometimes militarily, Pape notes. But “the sustained presence of heavy American combat forces in Muslim countries,” he warns in the book, “is likely to increase the odds of the next 9/11.”
As for the suicide terrorist magnet of the day, Iraq is heading toward a “disastrous defeat” for the United States because U.S. policies are “unworkable,” Pape says. Unless the Iraqi government quickly gets direct control of its own military, he says, “this isn't gonna work. I'm sorry. ... They’ve had two years to straighten this out.”
[snip]
Full article...
Full article...
War on Terror Is Misguided, Professsor Says
By Caryle Murphy
The Washington Post
Washington -- Washington was its summer muggiest as Robert A. Pape made his rounds. He was on his second trip to the capital in a week. The first time, he had briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill. On this day, there was a breakfast discussion with 50 people at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, then a visit to Voice of America. By the time he arrived for an interview, lugging a huge plastic binder with his cherished statistics on suicide terrorists, Pape was perspiring profusely.
Pape's world is a little topsy-turvy right now because the loquacious University of Chicago political science scholar is hollering “No!” to some of the conventional wisdom underpinning U.S. foreign policy. Specifically, Pape contends in his controversial new book, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, that U.S. policymakers misread why suicide terrorists do what they do.
“Suicide terrorism is not so much committed by religious fanatics looking for a quick trip to paradise as it is by a variety of secular and religious individuals who fear that their societies will be unalterably transformed by a religiously motivated occupier,” says Pape, who was sought out last week by CNN and Fox in the wake of the London terrorist attacks.
The “presumed connection” between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism has fueled the U.S. foreign policy project of transforming Muslim societies into secular democracies, sometimes militarily, Pape notes. But “the sustained presence of heavy American combat forces in Muslim countries,” he warns in the book, “is likely to increase the odds of the next 9/11.”
As for the suicide terrorist magnet of the day, Iraq is heading toward a “disastrous defeat” for the United States because U.S. policies are “unworkable,” Pape says. Unless the Iraqi government quickly gets direct control of its own military, he says, “this isn't gonna work. I'm sorry. ... They’ve had two years to straighten this out.”
[snip]
Full article...
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Date: 2005-07-15 03:55 pm (UTC)You know what they say about "if it's too good to be true . . . ."
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Date: 2005-07-15 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-17 06:40 am (UTC)