What Makes Suicide Bombers Tick?
Two decades ago, comedian/actress Lily Tomlin starred in a brilliant one-woman show called The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. In one skit, she portrayed Trudy, a crazy but incisive bag lady who gripes that her “space chums” couldn’t distinguish between a can of Campbell’s soup and a picture of Andy Warhol’s painting of a can of Campbell’s soup. When she shuffled the items behind her back, her alien friends became hopelessly confused about which was real. That came to mind when I compared President Bush’s June 28 speech on Iraq with a presentation two days later by Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago. Pape is the author of a new book, Dying to Win, which provides the first data-based analysis of suicide bombers, and he reaches conclusions that are stunningly different from the President’s. But no one could be confused about what’s real and what isn’t. Full Story