The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven

by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern

democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists

view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the

West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign–over 95 percent of all the

incidents–has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to

withdraw.

That’s Robert Pape, author of Dying to Win: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism, an in interview from several years ago. Steve Levitt points to the interview in one of his best posts. Here’s one bit from Levitt. Read the whole thing.