Originally published February 6 2006
Political analyst disagrees with Bush rhetoric regarding the motivation of terrorists
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Ivan Eland, director of the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute, analyzes the ideological basis for the war on terror.
hatred in these parts of the world.
Furthermore, Bush's grand plan to reduce terrorism by spreading freedom and democracy to Islamic nations -- thereby eliminating the hatred of such values -- is not based on any empirical evidence that oppression causes terrorism.
These data corroborate an earlier well-known study by William Eubank and Leonard Weinberg, professors at the University of Nevada, Reno, which found that most terrorist attacks happen in democracies -- with both the victims and the attackers usually being citizens of democracies.
Gause also notes that recent elections and public opinion polls in Arab countries indicate that the advent of democracy would probably generate Islamic governments that would be much less likely to cooperate with the United States than their authoritarian predecessors.
In a recent study on suicide bombing, Robert A. Pape, an associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago -- and a conservative -- agrees that bin Laden's primary reason for attacking the United States and its allies is to drive "infidels" out of Muslim lands.
Although the constant use of the word "infidels" seems to indicate that religion is driving bin Laden's efforts, Pape recognizes that bin Laden's is really a nationalistic attempt to drive a democracy out of his homeland.
He also notes that many other suicide bombing campaigns -- such as the Sikhs' attacks against the Indians in the Punjab province of India, the Tamil Tigers' strikes against the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, and the Kurdistan Workers' Party's attacks against the Turks -- have had nothing to do with Islam and are also attempts to oust a democratic intruder from a national homeland.
Given the vulnerability of the country to terrorism and the government's inability to protect everything, reducing the motivation for terrorists to attack the United States is crucial.
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