Because it’s a chickenshit phrase used by certain right wingers who wish to gloss over the fact that what really happened was a suicide bombing. I cringe whenever I hear it on Fox News.
Do they call insurgents who plant bombs by the roadside and keep themselves at a safe distance from the blast to preserve their own lives “homicide bombers”? To my knowledge, no they don’t. The phrase is selectively used in place of “suicide bomber” because they are uncomfortable with the fact that someone sacrificied their own life to kill others.
Honestly, I’m uncomfortable with it too. I don’t like how their suicides make them completely unaccountable for their actions, and how their last thoughts are about the 72 virgins they will screw in heaven. But I’m not going to use weasel words to pretend it didn’t happen.
One of the best examples of Fox News’ idiocy regarding the phrase “homicide bomber” occurs in their version of this wire story from February 06, 2004, Bomb Rips Apart Moscow Subway, Killing 39:
Right, guys, because people who merely place bombs on crowded subway trains and then stroll away aren’t, you know, homicide bombers, just, um, bombers who are plotting to commit…er…ah…homicide. (Of course, this was really just an example of what happens when you give an idiot a “find and replace” function–it’s an AP wire story, and other news sources’ version of the story did not contain the :smack: -worthy phraseology.)
Interestingly, a Google search on the foxnews.com domain for the phrase “homicide bomber” in conjunction with such search terms as “Unabomber”, “Kaczynski”, “McVeigh”, or “Eric Robert Rudolph” yields…zero hits. (Although, if you remove the “homicide bomber” verbiage, you get plenty of results.) If Ted Kaczynski and Tim McVeigh aren’t “homicide bombers”, then I don’t know who is. And Eric Robert Rudolph is certainly an “alleged” or “accused” homicide bomber.
Oddly enough that “72 Virgins” myth plays the very same role as ‘homicide bomber’.
Could it be that a person could be so moved by some real and material passion that they choose to give their life for it? Could action of the US offend to provoke such a thing? No, it is more comfortable to assume the promise of an eternity of satiated lust.
Why? Because the alternative is that you might consider the bravery involved.
Oh, they’re definitely brave. They’re also evil scum. Bravery, after all, is not a moral quality. Some of the most repulsive people in history - the Nazis, for instance - were undeniably brave. Calling your enemies courageous does not mean you’re conceding any moral ground, it just means your work is going to be more difficult.
But the bravery of the suicide bombers (and yes , I don’t like the term “homicide bomber” either) is hardly important, because they themselves aren’t that important - they’re nothing more than an advanced form of guided munition. No, the real loathsome people are the ones who send the bombers on their mission, and these are people who no-one would ever deem courageous. A leader who makes it a policy to send his soldiers to certain death while refusing to risk his own life cannot by any standard be called brave.
As I’ve said before, using the term “homicide bomber” indicates that the person substituting it for “suicide bomber” thinks suicide, and in particular suicide in the act of murdering people, is somehow noble. It isn’t.
Maybe we need a new term. I recommend “kaze”, from kamikaze. The term was coined by writer Stephen R. Donaldson in his Gap Cycle science fiction novels, and it refers to a particulaly nasty from of terrorist who have explosives surgically implanted inside their bodies (a technology that isn’t that far away - and the thought of it should give us all some sleepless nights).
It does sound a bit strained. Much like all the pretty euphemisms being employed these days in place of “terrorists”. But I fail to see the pitiable offence of “homicide bomber”, at least it seem to tackle the central element of what they do, kill civilians, rather that how they do it, by suicide or dynamite. Their own suicide was never the important part. The people they killed was. If method was the most important part, they might better have been described “dynamite and nail bombers”.
“Kaze” is a very bad idea. Kamikaze pilots never targeted civilians. They would resent the comparison with Hamas dogs blowing up pizzerias and school busses.
But it is important in terms of tactics - it makes prevention way more difficult. In the same way way the policy that no baggage may fly with an airline unaccompanied worked well for preventing ‘regular’ terrorist bombers, but has now been largely negated due to the willingness of terrorists to die in their own atrocity.
I mean, if you’re so damned uncomfortable with “suicide bomber” (and like jjim, I see nothing noble in suicide, so I see no problem with it) just call them bombers, or terrorist bombers, or terrorists. All are factually accurate and not as clumsy as “homicide bombers” or calling them the Japanese word for “wind”. Of course, this means that reporters would have to use another sentence to remark that they bomber took his own life in the process.
Homicide bombers is just so damn redundant. Can you imagine a homicide shooter?
I never watch Faux News so I was blissfully unaware of the term “homocide bomber” until I saw it mentioned in the lame documentary Outfoxed. I guess they say it all the time huh? Give me a break.
Call me crazy, but shouldn’t we call it what the police call it?
The phrase “homicide bomber” is redundant and stupid. “Suicide bomber” accurately describes the individual who performs the act without condoning it.
I don’t consider that “bravery” is involved in a form of suicide that includes the slaughter of innocent people, any more than I consider the husband who murders his estranged wife and then kills himself to be brave.
I had never heard the phrase before this thread but I can understand why elements of the media would advocate the substitution. I heard Australian politician Joe Hockey speak on matters totally unrelated to the Middle East before the Press Club. At the end of his talk he was asked about the situation in Israel and Palestine. He revealed, surprisingly, that his family are Palestinian and that he is a frequent visitor to the area. When asked about the morality of “suicide bombers” he asked the audience to imagine living a life so barren of hope that when you are young “suicide bombing” seems like the smart choice.
Thich Quang Duc proved to me when I was very young that different belief systems accomodate different ways of dealing with perceived injustice.
While I understand your proscription against killing others in the pursuit of a cause and largely agree, I find it difficult to ignore the element of sacrifice required by “suicides” to a cause, be it Vietnamese monks, IRA prisoners, Palestinian youths. And I’m sure that media folks know that I feel like this and will do anything to deny me the opportunity to ever think it.
Innocents don’t die from the suicide part of the term. They die from the bomber part of the term. And Ari Fleischer wouldn’t know plain English if it bit him on the kiester.
As mentioned, the avoidance of the perfectly descriptive term “suicide bomber” (mostly driven by Murdoch Media, parent of FOX, at least in this part of the world) seems to come out of some twisted sense that “suicide” somehow recognizes honor or dignity upon the perpetrator. But I am another one who sees no such link. I suppose that you could call it a “human bomb”, but then you would still be recognizing the individual as human and I’m not sure FOX is up to that (me, I have no problem; we humans ARE the most dangerous thing walking the Earth).