Bad Timing

Recently the anti-war left got a boost with the publication of a new book, Dying to Win : The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. This book purports to be the first in-depth look at suicide bombers from 1980 to the present. Among the findings:

FACT: Suicide terrorism is not primarily a product of Islamic fundamentalism.

FACT: The world's leading practitioners of suicide terrorism are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka - a secular, Marxist-Leninist group drawn from Hindu families.

FACT: Ninety-five percent of suicide terrorist attacks occur as part of coherent campaigns organized by large militant organizations with significant public support.

FACT: Every suicide terrorist campaign has had a clear goal that is secular and political: to compel a modern democracy to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland.

FACT: Al-Qaeda fits the above pattern. Although Saudi Arabia is not under American military occupation per se, one major objective of al-Qaeda is the expulsion of U.S. troops from the Persian Gulf region, and as a result there have been repeated attacks by terrorists loyal to Osama bin Laden against American troops in Saudi Arabia and the region as a whole.

FACT: Despite their rhetoric, democracies–including the United States–have routinely made concessions to suicide terrorists. Suicide terrorism is on the rise because terrorists have learned that it’s effective.

This book has been getting a lot of buzz. Last week it was the basis of articles in the Columbus Dispatch and Slate.

This book is just what the anti-war left wanted to hear. According to it, we are not fighting a religious war. We are actually in a struggle against a nationalist movement to reclaim a country from the government left behind when the Europeans retreated from their colonies.

Framed this way, the whole war against terror is exactly like Viet Nam. These are all loaded terms used by the left to describe the Viet Nam War.

The trouble is that it doesn't match the most recent bombings in England or Egypt.

In England the chief suspects were born in England. As Fareed Zakaria points out

Nor can foreign policy really explain such rage. The invasion of Iraq clearly has greatly enraged many Muslims, radicalizing some deeply. But can a disagreement over foreign policy really make a Briton like Germaine Lindsay, who had never even visited Iraq, kiss his pregnant wife and child goodbye and go out and blow himself and others up?

Where are the clearly defined goals in these bombing? Britain was a leading partner in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq but Egypt was against both.

Al Qaeda has always had the opposite of clear goals. They never claimed credit for September 11. The FBI had to figure it out and many people still don't believe that they did it.

A terrorist group with clear goals immediately takes credit for their actions and gives a list of demands that will stop further acts. We know in general what bin Laden's goals are from statements that he has made but he has been very poor about making concrete demands. The closest he came was a couple of years ago when he offered a truce for any European country that pulled out of Iraq - a truce that was quickly broken when Spanish authorities discovered further plots even after they recalled their troops.

All of this should seem self-obvious but people were accepting Dying to Win anyway.

It's hard to imagine this continuing after the last three bombings. Had terrorism been confined to Iraq and the Middle East in general then Democrats would have started the 2006 Congressional campaign saying that all we need to do is withdraw our troops and terrorism will stop. Once the Viet Nam parallel is fixed, this is inevitable. The Domino Theory did not happen therefore the spread of terrorism will not happen.

But they can only say this as long as the bombs are limited to Iraq. Once the bombs started going off in Europe and Egypt this whole argument evaporated.

We are still left wondering what al Qaeda's goals are? It isn't getting US troops out of Saudi Arabia. We pulled most of our troops some time ago.

It's not just Iraq either, or if it is then we have a positive connection between the bombers and Saddam.

It might be about revenge for overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan. Too bad Kerry identified this as the "right" war (if Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time then Afghanistan must have been the right one).

But probably it is because they hate us - our permissive culture and democratically elected government.

UPDATE: This article explains that Egypt is a target for having a generally pro-western government. Egypt was the first Moslum country to make peace with Israel and it accepts hugh amounts of foreign aid from the US. This is at odds with the concept that al Qaeda is after specific political goals and in line with the concept that they are generally at war with the West.

UPDATE II: Jane Fonda is going on an anti-Iraq war bus tour.