Tucker Carlson : Life Ending Missions

[safar]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8572027/#storyContinued

Interesting excerpts from Robert Pape in Tucker Carlson's show, note that "Tamil Tigers" from Hindu families have committed more acts of suicide bombings than Hammas, yet the media......:

"....TUCKER CARLSON: I should also say you’ve compiled the world’s largest database on suicide terrorism. You studied every suicide bombing in the world since about 1980, so you’re a good guy to ask, obviously, the guy to ask. You make the point, if I understand it correctly, that, most of the time, suicide bombing is a response to foreign occupation, you say, not a product of religious extremism. Can you explain that?

ROBERT PAPE: Yes. Over 95 percent of all suicide terrorist attacks around the world since 1980 have in common not religion, but a clear strategic purpose, to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland or prize greatly..."

"...CARLSON: And, yet, as far as I know -- and I think this is correct -- the bulk of U.S. forces still in Asia, not the Middle East, Asia, where there are, of course, religious differences between most of the U.S. forces and the local populations. And you haven’t seen suicide bombings there. My point is, isn’t there something special about Islamic fundamentalism that’s causing the terrorism that’s so bedeviling the world right now?

PAPE: The answer is, there’s not something special about Islamic fundamentalism. In fact, since 1980, the world’s leader in suicide terrorism isn’t an Islamic fundamentalist group at all. They’re the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist group that is completely secular. They draw from the Hindu families of Sri Lanka. The secular Hindu Tamil Tigers have done more suicide terrorist attacks than Hamas. The secular Hindu Tamil Tigers invented the famous suicide vests for their suicide assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991. The Palestinian and al-Qaida and other suicide terrorist groups got the idea of a suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers. You’re right that, in Asia, there’s no suicide terrorism against us. But, in my book, I point out that, in addition to the necessary condition of foreign occupation and a religious difference, there’s a third critical difference, which is a prior rebellion. So, the fact is, if we ever saw a local rebellion against the presence of our troops in South Korea, that might actually lead to suicide terrorists..."