Pape Via Yglesias

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

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 presentation he 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.

You can see this in, for example, this Zawahri speech -- he's telling people that they have to fight "the Zionists and the Crusaders".  All the "Crusader" talk you hear from al-Qaeda fits perfectly with Pape's theory -- one of the central grievances is that foreign military forces are running around in their country, and the "Crusader" trope is a natural way to express that.