A Scholarly Look at Terror Sees Bootprints In the Sand (washingtonpost.com, 07/09/05) describes some research into certain styles of attacks by Robert A. Pape, a professor who does a bit of consulting for the military.

'Well, I was actually surprised' to discover that 'what over 95 percent of all suicide attacks around the world since 1980 until today have in common is not religion, but a clear, strategic objective: to compel a modern democracy to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland.'

This is a worthwhile read about potential causes for terrorism. Which make a lot more sense than 'they hate us because we love freedom/fries/rock/whatever.'

It's also one of those articles with odd opposing viewpoints. Pape's analysis is on suicide bombers, and so one of his critics points out that suicide bombers can't exist in occupied country A because they don't exist in occupied country B under similar conditions. And then misses the entire sideline about U.S. military bases in places with unpopular regimes.

I'm not sure if criticism that makes no sense is intended to help or hurt. Surely there are other, more substantive, competing theories than are quoted here. 'Still, it's worth reading.

How do YOU define a terrorist act? Greenpeace Commemorates 1985 Ship Bombing (washingtonpost.com, 07/09/05). For those of you who don't recall this, back in 1985 the French government, hostile over interference and publicity from Greenpeace over their nuclear activities in the Pacific, planted bombs in the Greenpeace ship 'Rainbow Warrior,' then docked in New Zealand, killing one person. (This was a ship that I, as a small child, had enjoyed during a school field trip years earlier.) The article describes all that and more. But this is the part that caught my eye:

New Zealand branded the attack 'an act of state-sponsored terrorism' and, after years of open hostility with France, won a multimillion-dollar reparations payment and what Greenpeace has called an 'unconvincing apology.'

Pierre Lacoste, who headed France's counter-espionage agency at the time, said in an interview last week with The New Zealand Herald that the drowning of photographer Pereira was an accident that weighed heavily on his conscience. 'I would perfectly understand it if New Zealanders considered this act to be an act of terrorism, to sink a boat in a port where there are just yachtsmen, peaceful people,' he told the newspaper. 'It does not really deserve to be called that, but if it is felt in that way, that is reality,' he said.

So, Mr. Lacoste doesn't think that blowing up an unarmed, advocacy group's ship in a civilian harbor is a terrorist act?? SERIOUSLY??

If only the reporter asked Mr. Lacoste what he WOULD have met that qualification!

I think this is one of those unfortunate examples of 'terrorism is in the eyes of the beholder,' which makes the moral posturing of nations against some acts, but not others, seem so hollow.

Another tragedy, and another debate: BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | London bombs: The Iraq question:

In February of the following year the same committee reported: 'The war in Iraq has possibly made terrorist attacks against British nationals and British interests more likely in the short term.'

And it was later revealed that, before the war, the Joint Intelligence Committee had also warned that military action against Iraq might 'heighten', rather than reduce, the terrorist threat to western interests.

Sad state of affairs, supposedly reflecting 'freedom being on the march': BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Iraq rebuilding fails to deliver (06/22/05):

In the last few days, for example, more than 40 Iraqis have been killed in bomb attacks against police trainees, and at a Baghdad restaurant.

It has become so commonplace the rest of the world hardly notices any more.

I fear that some of this indifference is caused by the brief, manufactured, pseudo-euphoria that came when many Americans justified all the suffering in Iraq with the appearance of elections there, and now feel that 'our work there is done' and we need not be concerned with either the outcome of the elections, nor the state of the nation.