In a story yesterday, New York Times reporter Douglas Jehl expressed puzzlement at the lack of suicide bombings in the West before the London attacks:

Why suicide attacks have not previously emerged in the West is a mystery. In the Middle East and in Asia, the tactic has spread in recent years far beyond its origins in Lebanon in 1982, where it was pioneered by the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah.

But as University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape wrote in the Times back in May, “What nearly all suicide terrorist attacks actually have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland.”

As such, it’s not surprising that suicide bombings have been primarily used in the Middle East and Asia; that’s where the occupations have taken place. And as Pape documented in another Times op-ed last week, Al Qaeda is currently shifting its attention toward US allies supporting the Iraq occupation in order to try to force them to withdraw; hence the bombings in Madrid and London.

The problem is that Jehl examines suicide bombings as a tactic, but they are part of larger strategies employed by terrorist groups. Once they are examined in that context, the patterns of use become more clear. Yet another example of why reporters need to call political scientists more often!