Libertas

Iranian Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh

Blowback in Iran

Ron Paul uses the overthrow of Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh of Iran in 1953 as a classic example of blowback. American and British intelligence worked together in overthrowing the legally and popularly elected government and replaced Prime Minister Mossadegh with the politically reliable but repressive Shah of Iran. A quarter of a century later, the Iranian Islamic Revolution took place. The revolutionaries overthrew the Shah and held American hostages for 444 days. Although the mullahs had little use for the secular Mossadegh, they nevertheless played on the Iranian people’s resentment of American interventionism in their country.

Suicide Terrorism

Dr. Paul then tells of his former assumptions regarding suicide bombings. He, as did I, believed that religious fanaticism was the motivating factor in suicide attacks. The suicide bombers, it is commonly said, kill infidels in the hope of entering paradise for their martyrdom. However, Dr. Robert Pape, of the University of Chicago, in his book, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, collected data from all 462 suicide terrorist attacks from 1980 to 2004. The two major surprises in his research were: 1) religious motivation was not as important as originally assumed and 2) the stronger motivation was instead a desire “to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory the terrorist view as their homeland.” For example, the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka are the worlds leaders in suicide attacks, and yet are secular Marxists, and the two largest Islamic countries, Iran and the Sudan, had produced no suicide terrorists.

During the “al Qaeda years” of 1995 through 2004, two-thirds of all suicide attackers came from countries that had American stationed troops. While it is true that al-Qaeda terrorists are twice as likely to come from a country with a strong Wahhabist or radical Islamic influence, they are ten times as likely to come from a country stationed with foreign American troops.

Until the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, there had never been a suicide terrorist attack there. From 1982 to 1986 when the U.S., France, and Israel had their forces in Lebanon, there were 41 terrorist suicide attacks. However, after they withdrew their troops, there were no more attacks. According to Pape, Osama bin Laden and others like him, cannot inspire suicide terrorism by religion alone. After much study, he writes that the longer the occupation of Muslim countries, “the greater the chance of more 9/11 – type attacks on the United States.”

Ron Paul reminds the reader that for most of the twentieth century American “had an excellent reputation in the Middle East,” the part of the world that “hates us for our freedom and prosperity.” Now, after decades of interfering in the internal affairs of their countries, the American government he writes, “is hated in the Middle East and around the world to a degree . . . never seen before in [his] lifetime.” This hatred does not and cannot make us safer he says.

Congressman Paul agrees there will always be those who will want to harm America, no matter what its foreign policy, but when they cannot point to any “tangible issues that . . . motivate people,” such as foreign interventionism or worse – foreign occupation, they will no longer have recruits to commit acts of terrorism. Now, however, since the invasion of Iraq, “al Qaeda recruitment has exploded.”

Inspired by The Revolution by Ron Paul

Talk to Iran!

Ron Paul speaks at a rally on 10 June 2008 promoted by The Mossadegh Project.

Ron Paul: TALK TO IRAN! from Mossadegh Project on Vimeo.