Terrorism and the Voting Booth – It's Really the Foreign Policy, Stupid

Who is more likely to change our course in the Middle East for more positive results, McCain or Obama?

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By Rocky Boschert

About three years back, in the middle of the more intense fighting of the Iraq war, I talked to an Army physical therapist working with dismembered Iraq war veterans at Fort San Houston in San Antonio. Even though his training was in physical therapy, he sadly told me he spent most of his time helping the harmed soldiers get through their suicidal depression.

The physical therapist is now retired after 20 years of military service. During our conversation I asked him why he was retiring when he was providing such an important and honorable service to our country. His reply was without hesitation: “Our political and military leadership have lost their way.”

Having lived through the Vietnam era as a teenager and college student, and now Iraq, it wasn’t hard to understand what he meant. 

Every couple of generations our national leaders get us into another stupid and destructive war, using propaganda lies that ignorant and fearful Americans believe is valid – stopping communism, protecting free markets and democracy, or in the case of Iraq, WMDs aimed at America.

Time for a foreign policy reality check

And now, in this new century, we engage a fanatic enemy hidden in the global infrastructure that employs horrific tactics that Americans are simply unable to stop without committing their own war crimes and direct violations of the Geneva Convention.



Many Americans assume that we are in Afghanistan and Iraq fighting suicidal terrorists who are extremist Islamic fundamentalists that hate of our democratic freedoms. We have heard about the promise of instant entry into paradise as a reward for killing infidels as a way to explain the suicide bombings, a concept that is foreign to our way of thinking.

The reality, however, is more complex. Robert Pape, author of a book entitled "Dying to Win,” explains the strategic logic of suicide terrorism. Pape has collected a database of almost every major suicide terrorist attack through 2006, over 1000 of them. His conclusions are enlightening and crucial to our understanding the true motivation behind the attacks against Western nations by Islamic terrorists.

In his exhaustive study, Pape unveils some very important facts and conclusions. 

First, religious beliefs are much less important than supposed. For instance, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist secular group, are the world's leader in suicide terrorism. And other than Saudi Arabia, the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries have not been responsible for any suicide terrorist attack. None have come directly from Iran or the Sudan.

Between 1995 and 2002, the global al-Qaeda years, two-thirds of all terrorist attacks occurred in countries where the U.S. had troops stationed. And until the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iraq never had a suicide terrorist attack in all of its history. But after 2003, once the US military occupied Iraq, almost all of Iraq's suicide missions were carried out by Iraqi Sunnis and al Qaeda recruited locals. Moreover, 15 of the 19 participants in the NYC 9/11 attacks were Saudis, where we also have US military bases.

Occupation is terrorism's strongest motivation

According to Pape, the strongest motivation for terrorism and suicide bombings is not religion but rather a desire "to compel modern democracies to withdraw occupying military forces from territories the terrorists view as their homeland." If stopping suicide terrorism is an objective we truly seek as a nation, a solution is available to us: Cease the occupation of foreign lands, and most suicide missions will also cease.

Again, the proof is in the pudding. Between 1982 and 1986, there were 41 suicide terrorist attacks in Lebanon. Once the U.S., the French, and Israel withdrew their forces from Lebanon, there were no more terrorist attacks. The reason the attacks stopped is that the Osama bin Laden’s of the world could no longer inspire potential suicide terrorists despite their fanatical religious beliefs.

Pape’s research indicates that the longer and more extensive the US occupation of Muslim territories, the greater the chance of more 9/11-type attacks on the U.S. 

Americans need to wake up and look at reality. It is time for a major strategic reassessment of our imperial policy of foreign interventionism, occupation, and nation-building. It is in our national security interest, our domestic economic interests, and in the interest of world peace to do so.

It is for this reason that the election of John McCain as President of the United States would be a step in the wrong direction. McCain, being a military man, believes it is normal to have US military bases in Islamic countries. Unfortunately, under a military minded McCain foreign policy, we are more likely to see a continuation of very ugly terrorist acts against the United States (at least compared to the possibility of a more international negotiating Barack Obama presidency).

Of course, American voters and consumers are ultimately responsible for our bogus wars and aggressive overseas interventions as it is our gluttonous consumption of global natural resources that gives justification to a military-corporate controlled White House to implement a belligerent US foreign policy.

Is it not telling that the United States is 5% of the world’s population yet consumes 25% of the world’s natural resources? Is it not telling that the United States alone accounts for 50% of all the world’s military budgets combined? Additionally, our continued dependence on fossils fuels as our primary energy source only adds to the justification of a militaristic foreign policy.

Think about our children's future first



An old comedian once quipped: “Old soldiers never die – because it’s the young ones doing all the fighting.”

War, if unavoidable, should never be decided by what old people want in their future. War should be decided by what we don’t want our children to live with in their future. Personally, I am sick and tired of seeing our children sent off to die because of an ignorant militaristic United States foreign policy decided on by angry men and directed by weapons manufacturers, oil companies, and other mercenary corporate masters.

Terrorism against the United States is something we can mostly alleviate by simply getting our military out of Islamic countries. But we can only do so if we intelligently curtail our consumption of global natural resources. By reducing our global natural resource consumption, we send a message to corrupt power hungry politicians that war is no longer necessary to guarantee the American lifestyle.

And come November 4, we can start by NOT voting into the White House an old military man who believes it is his turn to be President and run the military. The truth is if we as a country really want to eliminate terrorism against us, we would have a better chance succeeding with Barack Obama as President.

Heck, even General Colin Powell now supports Mr. Obama for these same reasons.

Rocky Boschert has resided in Wimberley since 1993. He currently serves as board president of the Katherine Anne Porter School (KAPS) in Wimberley. Mr. Boschert owns and manages Arrowhead Asset Management.