Front & Center with John Callaway: Suicide Bombing: Who, Why and What Can Be Done About It

One of the most challenging weapons used by terrorists is the suicide bomber. Low in cost and highly lethal, suicide bombing has appeared throughout history as a political and military tactic. Since the 1980s, it has been utilized most frequently in conflicts throughout the Middle East. John Callaway and his panelists explored and debated the history, psychology, impact and military implications of the suicide bomber.

Robert A. Pape is Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago specializing in international security affairs. His most recent book is Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. His other publications include Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War and numerous articles in such peer-reviewed journals as International Security, American Political Science Review, and Foreign Affairs. His commentary on international security policy has appeared in such newspapers as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists as well as on local and national television and radio. He taught international relations at Dartmouth College and air power strategy for the USAF's School of Advanced Airpower Studies. He received his Ph. D. from the University of Chicago and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pittsburgh. His current work focuses on suicide terrorism, the logic of soft balancing in a unipolar world, and the limits and advantages of precision air power.

Thomas R. Mockaitis is Professor of History at DePaul University. As an adjunct faculty member of the Center for Civil Military Relations, he has co-taught several terrorism/counterterrorism courses and worked with a team of specialists to help the Romanian Army rewrite its civil-military cooperation doctrine. He has lectured at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College and the Canadian Forces Staff College, and presented papers at the Pearson Peacekeeping Center (Canada), the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (UK), and at conferences co-sponsored with the Military Science Department of the Austrian Ministry of Defense. A frequent media commentator, Dr. Mockaitis has regularly as a terrorism expert for WGN TV News (Channel 9). He is the author of British Counterinsurgency: 1919-1960, British Counterinsurgency in the Post-Imperial Era and Peacekeeping and Intrastate Conflict: the Sword or the Olive Branch?  Mockaitis earned a BA in European History from Allegheny College in Meadville, PA, and his MA and Ph.D. in Modern British and Irish History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. David M. Terman is the Director of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis where he is also a Training and Supervising Analyst. He has been a practicing psychoanalyst for the past 40 years, and he has been part of the group at the Chicago Institute that developed the segment of psychoanalysis known as Self Psychology. Widely published in professional journals, he appears frequently on panels at conferences in his field. In the past several years he has become interested in the psychological organization in individuals and groups that he has labeled the "paranoid gestalt". With Charles Strozier, he organized and presented at a conference on the Psychology of Fundamentalism sponsored by the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis that explored these issues. He received his B.A. and medical degree from the University of Chicago. He received his psychoanalytic training at the Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis.