Robert A. Pape, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, discusses his database of every suicide terrorist attack on earth since 1980, what it shows about the role of religion and occupation in motivating suicide terrorism, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the amount of truth discernible from social science, the suicide bombing campaign in Iraq and spread around the world since the Iraq invasion, the motivation of the Japanese Kamikazes, the suicide attacks of the Jewish Zealots against Roman occupation 2,000 years ago, the strategic logic of suicide terrorism, the importance in the difference in religion of the occupiers and occupied, the illogical Obama/McCain consensus on escalating the war in Afghanistan and now Pakistan, the example of Hezbollah’s suicide campaign against Israeli/French/American forces in Lebanon, the profile of the individual suicide bomber, why fighting them over there makes us less safe here, Adam Gadahn and the real, human, political reasons he sites in al Qaeda recruitment videos, and why Paul Wolfowitz got it wrong even on the one occasion he was right.
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