US bases abroad breed anti-Americanism and feed terrorist recruitment

Evidence

It’s also indisputable that U.S. bases and troops abroad have consistently generated opposition and anger. In some extreme but far from isolated cases, bases and troops have either spawned violence against Americans or provided convenient targets, as in attacks on marines in Lebanon in 1983 and on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. The U.S. occupation of Saudi Arabia was a major recruiting tool for al-Qaeda and part of Osama bin Laden’s professed motivation for the 9/11 attacks. Research has shown that U.S. bases and troops in the Middle East have been a “major catalyst for anti-Americanism and radicalization” and that there has been a strong correlation between a U.S. basing presence and al-Qaeda recruitment. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 1047

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the central thesis of the book; the Saudi-occupation-as-recruiting-tool mechanism connects to earlier al-Qaeda and radicalization discussions.