Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism

UOregon Uploaded on Mar 5, 2008

The UO Channel presents the Oregon Humanities Center interview with Robert Pape, Visiting Lecturer, founder and Director, Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He discusses his book Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, including the profile of suicide terrorists, their goals, and his ideas on effective means of combating suicide terrorism in the Middle East. .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tEsWRXV_BM

Steve Shankman, a director is the interviewer .. John Pape is a political science, international relations/security and air power strategy guy who on 9/11 became interested in the history of 'suicide terrorism' .. he came to see we had "partial and thin data at best" on it and so collected a list of all terrorist acts 1980 - early 2004 .. so then we had more than we had then, yet less than we have now .. :) .. at 3:39 he characterizes the Jewish Sicarii (1AD) as the first suicide terrorists acting against the Roman occupation of the time .. they slit throats in an attempt to get the Jews to revolt against the Roman occupation of Judea .. like extremists today commit terrorist acts as acts of war AND to foment more conflict between Muslims and others .. Pape says their efforts did in fact help to create 'the Jewish revolt of 66AD, leading to the destruction of the 2nd Temple and to the Jewish diaspora .. he suggests the diaspora was not what the Zealots wished, of course .. anyway all readers (assuming none of our far-right loons would bother to be reading any such as this as that would represent a sacrilege to their tunneled vision, also it could cause them some discomfort in their 'safe' ideologically fixed cocoons) here would, before now, see parallels between the Sicarii "extremist splinter group of the Jewish Zealots .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicarii .. and the suicide terrorists of today .. Pape also points out, it was controversial at the time, that the Sicarii were not seen as acting as mainstream Judaism felt was legitimate .. just as mainstream Islam sees the extremists of today as acting outside of true Islam teachings .. point is that suicide terrorists have never been limited to fundamentalist Islam .. the Tamil Tigers Pape uses as a secular Hindu group .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_Tigers_of_Tamil_Eelam .. i'm still trying to figure how the Tigers could be labelled as "purely secular", as Pape does ..

Prof. PAPE: No. Actually, the Tamil Tigers are a purely secular suicide terrorist group. They're not a group that most of the listeners will have heard too much about because even though they're actually the world leader in suicide terrorism from 1980 to 2003, carrying out more suicide attacks than Hamas or Islamic Jihad, they're not attacking us and they're not attacking our allies.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104391493

.. maybe it's the same as mainstream Islam says AQ/ISIS types are not of Islam either

Muslims Are Speaking Out Against ISIS To Say: You Do Not Represent Us

Sick and tired of how they are being represented in the mainstream, these young British Muslims have launched a #NotInMyName social media campaign.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/rossalynwarren/muslims-are-speaking-out-against-isis-to-say-you-do-not-repr#.qoDedZWq7

.. anyway not surprisingly the neocon Daniel Pipes founded Middle East Form dismisses Papes .. http://www.meforum.org/1826/contrasting-secular-and-religious-terrorism .. as a revisionist .. don't agree .. they do remind us of more examples of secular terrorism though .. some here ..

There is nothing new about terrorism inspired by secular agendas. Although Plato, Aristotle, and leading Christian theologians such as Thomas of Aquinas, John of Salisbury, and George Buchanan discuss political violence, most terrorism experts mark Maximilian Robespierre's "Reign of Terror" during the French Revolution as the beginning of modern, political, systematic terrorism.[18] Beginning in the early nineteenth century, German and Italian radicals embraced terrorism and, in the 1880s, Narodnaya Volya (People's will), which conducted a violent campaign of assassination to fight autocracy in Russia,[19] became a role model for similar groups established by Armenians, Macedonians, Bosnians, and Serbs prior to World War I .. http://www.meforum.org/1826/contrasting-secular-and-religious-terrorism

Papes of the video was once an assistant of John Mearsheimer who is mentioned in the bit below .. i've enlarged my original excerpt to remind me .. lol .. of the stridency of AIPC as exhibited by their virulent opposition to any slight disagreement with them, evidenced by their aggressive opposition to any semblance of balanced debate on the Israel question .. anyway a little repeat of a long one ..

Friends of Israel .. from toughly halfway down ..

In 2007, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, two leading political scientists of the realist school, published a book called “The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.” The book, a best-seller, presented a scathing portrait of AIPAC, arguing that the lobby had a nearly singular distorting influence on American foreign policy, and even that it was a central factor in the rush to war in Iraq. While the authors’ supporters praised their daring, their critics argued that they had neglected to point out any failures of the Palestinian leadership, and painted AIPAC in conspiratorial, omnipotent tones. Even Noam Chomsky, a fierce critic of Israel from the left, wrote that the authors had exaggerated the influence of AIPAC, and that other special interests, like the energy lobby, had greater influence on Middle East policy.

A broader political challenge to AIPAC came in 2009, with the founding of J Street, a “pro-Israel, pro-peace” advocacy group. Led by Jeremy Ben-Ami, a former Clinton Administration aide whose grandparents were among the first settlers in Tel Aviv, J Street was founded to appeal to American Jews who strongly support a two-state solution and who see the occupation as a threat to democracy and to Jewish values. J Street has only a tiny fraction of AIPAC’s financial power and influence on Capitol Hill, but it has tried to provide at least some campaign funding to weaken the lobby’s grip.

AIPAC and its allies have responded aggressively. This year, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations voted not to admit J Street, because, as the leader of one Orthodox alliance said to the Times, its “positions are out of the mainstream of what could be considered acceptable within the Jewish community.” Danny Ayalon, the former Israeli Ambassador, told me, “When Jewish organizations join the political campaign to delegitimatize Israel, they are really undermining our security collectively. Because I do believe that, if Israel’s security is compromised, so is that of every Jew in the world.”

Many Israeli and Palestinian leaders have taken note of the rise of J Street and, without overestimating its capacities, see that it represents an increasing diversity of opinion in the American Jewish community. At the last J Street convention, in Washington, Husam Zomlot, a rising figure in Fatah, the largest faction in the P.L.O., delivered a speech about the Palestinian cause and got a standing ovation. “AIPAC is not as effective as it was,” Zomlot said. “I wouldn’t say J Street is the mainstream representative of Jewish Americans, but it is a trend that gives you some sense of where things are and what is happening. Though it has limited funding, it is the first organized Jewish group with a different agenda in Washington since Israel was established. It’s worth noticing.”

Some politicians in Washington have indeed noticed, and not always to their benefit. Soon after J Street got started, it endorsed Robert Wexler, a Democratic congressman who represented a South Florida district. “Some AIPAC people told me they would not support me anymore if I went to a J Street event or took their support,” Wexler recalled. “I called them and said, ‘You’ve supported me for twelve years. You’re not going to support me because somebody from J Street endorsed me?’ ” Wexler added, “AIPAC is still by a factor of a hundred to one the premier lobbying organization for the Jewish community. I’ll never understand why they care one iota about J Street—but they have this bizarre fixation on it.”

Jan Schakowsky, who has represented a liberal Chicago district since 1999, was another of J Street’s first endorsees. For years, she had maintained good relations with AIPAC, which gave money to her campaigns and praised her positions. She voted to condemn the Goldstone report and signed a 2010 letter urging the Administration to keep any differences with Israel private. But in her 2010 race, she was challenged by Joel Pollak, an Orthodox Jew, who argued that she was insufficiently supportive of Israel. “We were very much aware that AIPAC-associated people were fund-raising for Jan’s opponent,” Dylan Williams, the director of government affairs for J Street, said. A small but vocal contingent of AIPAC members were behind Pollak. But he was also backed by the Tea Party, which J Street believed might drive away other Jewish voters. The new lobby raised seventy-five thousand dollars for Schakowsky (through its PAC, whose financial contributions are publicly disclosed), and she won by a wide margin. “It was exactly the type of race we had hoped for!” Williams said. “A lot of the power of AIPAC is based on this perception, which I believe is a myth, that if you cross their line you will be targeted, and your opponent in your next race will receive all this money, and it will make a difference.” Still, Schakowsky told me, the process was painful. “Getting booed in a synagogue was not a pleasure,” she said. “This is not just my base—it’s my family!” She added, “Increasingly, Israel has become a wedge issue, something to be used against the President by the Republicans, and it can be very unhelpful.”

*

AIPAC is still capable of mounting a show of bipartisanship. At this year’s policy conference, Steny Hoyer, the House Democratic Whip, appeared onstage with Eric Cantor, then the Republican House Majority Leader, and together they rhapsodized about the summer trip they routinely took, leading groups of mostly freshmen on an AIPAC tour of Israel. “Few things are as meaningful as watching your colleagues discover the Jewish state for the very first time,” Cantor said.

Hoyer offered a benediction: “We Baptists would say, ‘Amen.’ ”

Cantor and Hoyer have been steadfast supporters of AIPAC, and its members have held at least a dozen fund-raisers for them each year. But last December AIPAC’s efforts to implement sanctions against Iran were so intense that even this well-tempered partnership fractured. When Congress returned from its Thanksgiving recess, legislators in the House began discussing a sanctions bill. According to the former congressional aide, Cantor told Hoyer that he wanted a bill that would kill the interim agreement with Iran. Hoyer refused, saying that he would collaborate only on a nonbinding resolution.

Cantor sent Hoyer a resolution that called for additional sanctions and sought to define in advance the contours of an agreement with Iran. “The pressure was tremendous—not just AIPAC leadership and legislative officials but various board members and other contributors, from all over the country,” the former congressional aide recalled. “What was striking was how strident the message was,” another aide said. “ ‘How could you not pass a resolution that tells the President what the outcome of the negotiations has to be?’ ” Advocates for the sanctions portrayed Obama as feckless. “They said, ‘Iranians have been doing this for millennia. They can smell weakness. Why is the President showing weakness?’ ” a Senate aide recalled.

AIPAC was betting that the Democrats, facing midterms with an unpopular President, would break ranks, and that Obama would be unable to stop them. Its confidence was not unfounded; every time Netanyahu and AIPAC had opposed Obama, he had retreated. But Obama took up the fight with unusual vigor. He has been deeply interested in nonproliferation since his college days, and he has been searching for an opening with Iran since his Presidential campaign in 2008. As the Cantor-Hoyer resolution gathered momentum, House Democrats began holding meetings at the White House to strategize about how to oppose it.
.. more .. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/01/friends-israel
posted by F6 here .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=105687086

.. i haven't yet finished the video ..