They Hate Us Because of Our Freedoms and Wholesome Goodness Damn it! You Got That?

Things to make you go, hmmm...

Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science professor and former Air Force lecturer, will present findings on Capitol Hill on Tuesday that argue that the majority of suicide terrorism around the world since 1980 has had a common cause: military occupation. 

Pape and his team of researchers draw on data produced by a six-year study of suicide terrorist attacks around the world that was partially funded by the Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency. They have compiled the terrorism statistics in a publicly available database comprising some 10,000 records on some 2,200 suicide terrorism attacks, dating back to the first suicide terrorism attack of modern times — the 1983 truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed 241 U.S. Marines. 

"We have lots of evidence now that when you put the foreign military presence in, it triggers suicide terrorism campaigns, ... and that when the foreign forces leave, it takes away almost 100 percent of the terrorist campaign," Pape said in an interview last week on his findings.

Don’t believe him? Then check it out for yourself.

Or... you could simply plug your ears and close your eyes to trifles such as counter narratives grounded in empirical evidence like Bob Schieffer of Face the Nation fame who launched into an ankle-biting tirade at GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul for expressing heretical thoughts about the consequences of American foreign policy...


Glenn Greenwald’s extended comments on this performance by one of our finest stenographers to Power is worth reading in full.