Killer instincts

It also doesn't explain how someone convinced the four British bombers (or the four bombers, whoever they are, who tried and failed to follow their example two weeks later) that it was their duty to kill and die on behalf of people they've never met in a country to which they have no personal connection. According to Pape, most suicide bombers in places like Sri Lanka and Palestine come from communities that support and valorize their choice; they see themselves, and are celebrated by those around them, as warriors who give their lives to defend their people.

The British bombers and to a lesser degree other takfiris (Islamist militants who adopt Western appearances and behavior as a cover) live surrounded by friends and family who are horrified to learn of their secret activities. (This was true, as well, of some of the Sept. 11 hijackers.) These terrorists belong to small, underground cells and might make occasional trips to Pakistan for training or indoctrination but are, in their home country, opposed to the larger community. Their actions bring their families and friends grief, confusion and shame, not pride and honor. The fellow Muslims they sacrifice themselves for -- Iraqis in this case -- are strangers.

The members of al-Qaida and its affiliated groups are more alienated than Pape will allow; many of them have chosen an idealized, even abstract community over the real, flesh-and-blood neighborhood they live in. While it's true that genuine political grievances against the West have won some sympathy for them in the Muslim world, their full political agenda isn't widely supported in most Muslim nations. (When fundamentalists get a shot at participating in the electoral process, they rarely fare well.) And as long as they can't succeed in installing Taliban-style governments in the Muslim world, they're unlikely to give up their lethal tactics (even if the targets may change).

What makes Wahhabism and other fundamentalist sects so appealing to these men? The most insightful book on the subject is one that came out before Sept. 11: Karen Armstrong's "The Battle for God." Armstrong characterizes fundamentalist movements (Christian and Jewish as well as Muslim) as reactions to the vast societal transformations of modernism. The major "back to basics" religious movements of the West coincided with disorienting changes in economies and ways of life: from feudalism to capitalism (which fostered the Protestant Reformation) and from agrarianism to industrialization (coinciding with the birth of fundamentalism in the 19th century).

Fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon, a way of putting on the brakes in a world that seems to be rocketing forward at a pace beyond the control of any ordinary individual. McDermott relates an anecdote from a German roommate who lived with Atta during his early days in Hamburg. Atta went with the roommate and his friends to see the animated Disney film "The Jungle Book," and Atta was so appalled by the unruliness of the crowd before the movie began that he "seethed in his seat, muttering over and over again in disgust, 'Chaos, chaos'" and refused to utter a word on the way home. Militant Islam gave Atta the rigid structure he craved in a world whose disorder revolted and surely terrified him.

The other Sept. 11 hijackers weren't such control freaks, but they were aimless young men unsure of their place. Journalists have marveled that most of the Sept. 11 hijackers and British bombers came from relatively secular homes. It shouldn't surprise us that fundamentalism attracts Muslims from Westernized backgrounds, and even some Western Muslims, because its appeal is precisely the refuge it offers from the flux and the instability of modern existence. If you don't know what to do with your life, fundamentalism tells you, and not only that, it tells you that you are important, a warrior and a hero.

The more mass media you're exposed to, the greater your sense of how big the world is and how tiny and insignificant you are in comparison, especially when you come from a relatively powerless nation that is losing its own cultural identity to globalism. But even Americans know what it's like to feel left behind by an economy so digitized and theoretical that you can make a fortune trading in derivatives but you can't make a living in the manufacturing of actual things. We have our own homegrown fundamentalist movement that feels assaulted by being asked to accept behavior their grandparents considered decadent and immoral. Some of them are even willing to kill for their beliefs if they think it will save innocent victims. If Islamist terrorists "hate our freedom," they're not the only ones.

It's easy to agree with Pape's recommendations for alleviating the geopolitical tensions that contribute to suicide terrorism: drastically reduce and eventually eliminate the number of American troops stationed on the soil of Persian Gulf nations, reduce our dependence on the region's oil. (He focuses less on another essential: brokering peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.) But it's a mistake to think this would end the violence. There are fundamentalists of many faiths fighting the convulsive changes happening all over the planet. They care about more than just one small piece of land; they want to "save" the world.

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