Suicide bombing as motivated cognition

According to University of Toronto sociology professor Robert Brym, revenge motivates suicide bombers.

Contrary to what most academic research has shown, says Brym, "revenge and retaliation seem to be the principal animus driving this suicide bombing campaign. We see this when we examine when attacks occur, what people say about why they're taking place and when we look at the actual costs and benefits gained."
Brym and his research team created a database of collective violence events that occurred during the second intifada, the term generally used to describe the Palestinian uprising against Israel that began in the fall of 2000. The team collected data on 138 attacks from existing databases, Hebrew and Arabic newspapers and the New York Times. They then mined the database for 128 variables, examining individual motives, organizational rationales and events that led up to each attack...
By examining statements made by bombers, their families or representatives from organizations they claimed to be working for, the authors found that attacks were not generally governed by a strategic logic, as is often believed to be the case, but were motivated by a desire for revenge. By examining events that preceded each specific attack, they found that particular Israeli actions such as killings prompted most attacks. "For the most part," they write, bombers "gave up their lives to avenge the killing of a close relative, as retribution for specific attacks against the Palestinian people or as payback for perceived attacks against Islam."
Even at the organizational level -- when attacks were organized by groups like Hamas -- where strategic concerns might be assumed to be more common, six out of ten rationales focused on avenging specific Israeli actions...
This suicide bombing campaign simply isn't working in the sense that the Palestinians are not realizing any strategic gains as a result, says Brym. On the other side of the conflict, he says, "Israeli acts of oppression are also counter-productive...
"From a utilitarian point of view, the conflict is irrational. It doesn't bring about intended results for either side. The idea of laying blame on one side or the other doesn't get us very far, analytically speaking. Unless it's understood as an interaction, it can't be understood fully -- or resolved."

I blogged in 2004 on research indicating that suicide bombers are not insane, but motivated by revenge. Given that humans appear to have a neurological mechanism that rewards a desire for revenge, the next operational question I'd like answered is what specifically triggers revenge. What cultures and contexts promote the expression of revenge?

Jessica Stern makes an interesting comment with regard to anger and humiliation:

One way to summarize the distinction that helps us understand Al Qaeda is to say that bin Laden's objectives are really expressive, not instrumental. Those groups that have set instrumental objectives are not going to carry out catastrophic attacks, because such attacks will never achieve those objectives, whereas groups that are expressing anger can continuously change their mission statement. If you have a broad one, based on rage, one day you can say that it's to force U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia. The next it can be about Iraqi children. The third day it can be about the Palestinians. That's a way to appeal to a much wider public.
Another thing about expressive terrorism is that it enables cynical leaders to attract youth who feel humiliated, culturally or personally.

Further research into terrorism and motivated cognition would appear to be a promising avenue. On a side note, consider how motivated reasoning may apply to the rationalization of terrorist acts. In other paradigms, religious correctness may be another validity metric used in evaluating what acts are permissible and what are not.

In an influential review, Ziva Kunda (1990) summarized several decades of research supporting the role of motivation in cognitive processes such as decision-making and attitude change. She claimed that motivation has been shown to affect reasoning in a number of paradigms, including cognitive dissonance reduction, beliefs about others on whom one's own outcomes depend, and evaluation of scientific evidence related to one's own outcomes. Her analysis of this research led further to the conclusion that motivated reasoning is only possible when the individual is able to generate apparently reasonable justifications for the motivated belief; this happens, however, outside of the person's conscious awareness. This is achieved via bias in accessing, constructing, and evaluating beliefs.

Were the alleged Canadian terrorists too stupid to take a hint?

According to the Toronto Star, the alleged terrorists were stupid.

Their so-called training camp turns out to have been a swath of bush near Washago, where their activities — shooting off firearms and playing paintball — were so obvious and so irritating that local residents immediately called police.
Serious terrorists ... base their operations in remote areas where no one will bother them. These suspects, it is alleged, simply trespassed on someone's farm and, when the owner told them to leave, gave him lip.

Consider the report that RCMP engages in disruptive tactics to deter and forestall terrorist acts.

The RCMP has quietly broken up at least a dozen terrorist groups in the past two years, according to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail...
Disruptive tactics -- sometimes as simple as letting targets know they are under close surveillance -- are used to prevent a terrorist attack when the police do not have enough evidence to lay criminal charges, the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service say.

Perhaps their operation was permitted to go as far as they did because they weren't an uncontrollable threat (as evidenced by the successful sting operation), and the likelihood that they were too stupid to take a hint to stop.

The Pentagon and the "long war"

Back in February, the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review of 2005 spoke of a long war:

The document, known by its acronym, QDR, opens with the words: "The US is engaged in what will be a long war."

It's not of their choosing. Al Qaida strategists beat them to it. According to this analysis by Michael Scheuer:

Al-Qaeda believes that it and its allies can only defeat the United States in a "long war", one that allows the Islamists to capitalize on their extraordinary patience, as well as on their enemies' lack thereof. Before his death in a firefight with Saudi security forces, the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Abu Hajar Abd al-Aziz al-Muqrin, wrote extensively about how al-Qaeda believed the military fight against the US and its allies would unfold. He envisioned a point at which the mujahideen would have to develop semi-conventional forces. He identified this period as the "Decisive Stage" [1].

The piece cited is dated February 2, 2004, approximately two years before the release of the latest QDR.

Al-Muqrin's ideas were hardly original on this point. Mao penned similar thoughts decades earlier.

Mao is considered to be the primary influence in guerrilla warfare. He recognizes the importance of the people in the success of the war. Well organized guerrilla units are encouraged by him to take the initiative, applying hit-and-run tactics, fighting in the enemy rear and establishing bases for popular support and for spreading their influence. He warned that guerrilla warfare is protracted and becomes conventional only as it approaches success.