Walk a mile in Omar's shoes

[hongi]

As far as I'm aware, the perceived meddling in Muslim affairs is the primary motivation for most terrorists. The cleansing of the West follows closely behind. Get rid of the first one and the ME leaders will turn to something else, anything else to keep attention away from their own desperate situation. Therefore I can see the terrorist attacks going on and on for the foreseeable future.

I also hold the opinion that you'll see the self-implosion of the Middle East into an orgy of violence and bloodshed within the coming decades, mostly directed towards each other.

[wolveraptor]

Jazz is his [the American's] preferred music, and it is created by Negroes to satisfy their love of noise and to whet their sexual desires ...

Jesus, how old is this? Jazz hasn't been considered mainstream for decades.

As far as I'm aware, the perceived meddling in Muslim affairs is the primary motivation for most terrorists. The cleansing of the West follows closely behind. Get rid of the first one and the ME leaders will turn to something else, anything else to keep attention away from their own desperate situation. Therefore I can see the terrorist attacks going on and on for the foreseeable future.

The problem is that even if the West ceases to interefere in the Middle East as of right now, the Middle Eastern countries would still be able to point to a history of such intereference and say, "This is the reason we're all fucked up!" Western imperialism will continue to be a factor in terrorism long into the future.

[Adrian Laguna]

wolveraptor is right, the Arabs have very long memories. Some are still pissed at the Spaniards for kicking them out of the Iberian Peninsula. Now this is somewhat understandable from a Western POV, after all Spain still holds all the formerly Muslim lands. However they are also angry about the Crusades, and that is very different from a Western Power's attitude, even ignoring the fact that it's been hundreds of years. You see, they won. I mean, do you see the Russians hate Germany for Second World War? No, because the Soviets kicked German ass all the way from the gates of Moscow to Berlin.

In the face of this, it would stand to reason that even hundreds of years from now the Arabs would point to British, French, and American intervention in the 20th Century as a source of their resentment toward the West.

[wolveraptor]

*snip*

Well, to be fair, one gains nothing by winning an entirely defensive war. The Soviets gained all of Eastern Europe by defeating the Nazis. The Arabs merely got to keep the shit that was theirs to being with. The Crusades were a costly endeavor for both sides, precisely because nobody lost any land.

[Adrian Laguna]

I seem to recall the Turks, who are Muslims, making it all the way to the gates of Vienna after all the Crusading ended.

[Spoonist]

*snip*

Well, to be fair, one gains nothing by winning an entirely defensive war.

Are you kidding? The gain from winning an entirely defensive war is not being conquered.

[metavac]

And what of suicide bombers in Palestine who were never particularly religious? Simply by reducing the enemy to the religiously motivated suicide bomber, you are already engaging in the act of reducing complexities to 2-dimensional cardboard caricatures.

Just a minor note. We don't really see suicide attacks emerging as a tactic in the Palestinian insurgency until Hamas and Islamic Jihad arrive on the seen, and even then it didn't catch on heavily until after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Oslo accords. Al Aqsa, as one of Fatah's attempts to catch up with the increasingly religious tenor of the insurgency, also appeals to Islamism in its efforts to marshal recruits.

[metavac]

I should note Professor Robert Pape, Director for the PISP up at the University of Chicago, has reached a counter-intuitive conclusion based on a database of over 300 incidents (ranging from the Levant to Anatolia to Sri Lanka) in the 1980s: secular groups accounted for 57 percent of suicide attacks.

[metavac]

Pape has a full book out, Dying to Win, which expands on his paper "The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism" (American Political Science Review).

[wolveraptor]

*snip*

Well, to be fair, one gains nothing by winning an entirely defensive war.

Are you kidding? The gain from winning an entirely defensive war is not being conquered.

Look, what I'm trying to say is that the Arabs, after spending money to successfully defend their homeland, had no conqueror's loot with which to ease the cost of war. It's the same with all defensive wars. There is a net pecuniary loss on the part of the defender, even if they keep all their territory. Though that may not be applicable in this case if what Adrian says is true.