Terror attacks are response to military actions

Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and director of the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, has put together a comprehensive data bank of every suicide terrorist attack (315) in the world since 1980.

"What nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common," notes Pape in his book, Dying to Win, "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." Pape also observes that once a military occupation ends, the suicide terrorism tends to stop.

I could go back even farther than 1980, to find examples throughout the 20th century, and with very little effort, throughout human history, though not all involve suicide attacks.

I remember the day Iranians took American hostages from our embassy in Iran. The day they took them, I knew exactly why, without even waiting for "official" US government explanations or media hype. For me, knowing our history with Iran, I knew how pissed they were at not only our support for the Shahs' repressive regime, but also the fact that we installed it in the first place by subverting their legitimate election. We didn't like the guy they elected, so we supported a coup that would lead their people into about 25 years of U.S. sponsored dictatorship. It was for a good cause though, we needed an ally in the region besides Israel, for the Cold War. That justified their suffering, didn't it? If you think so, then consider how you would feel if your leaders were installed by a foreign power, and trained them to suppress and brutalize you.

Somehow I don't think you'd like it. Such actions by our own government led to our contempt and hatered for the very people who struck back in frustration at what we'd done to them first. We hated them because we preferred to believe that they were just evil people, rather than in the truth, that had already been revealed to the public, by our government, just a few years prior. We chose to continue believing we had been innocent victims when they took our hostages. We kept it in the spotlight day after day, with government and media analysts that nitpicked over every reason in the world for their treacherous actions towards such innocents as ourselves, and gave only minor lip service to what we'd done to them. We could've put a stop to their suffering before it led up to "America Held Hostage", but instead chose to look the other way, for the sake of our Cold War stratagy.

That happened throughout the world, and in most cases, we paid a price for our arrogance, but not nearly the price paid by our pawns.

You know, it's funny how, if you ask most people about owning up to personal responsibility, they'll agree that people should be held accountable for their actions, but when it comes to the actions of our "representatives", we live in some fantasy world, where they can do whatever they want, with our ignorant blessings, as long as it's off shore. We all can name countless examples of (domestic) government mismanagement, deceptions, and fraud, but when it comes to foreign policy decisions and their consequences, we naively believe they've somehow magically become competent and always look out for our best interests. We continue to believe in the age old fallacy that says that only the elite are qualified to comprehend the intricacies of international politics. Bullshit!

Stop living in denial, and start demanding our representitives treat the people of the world with the same respect and common decency that we demand they treat us, otherwise.......