It doesn’t mean all that much in and of itself. The only part that troubles me is, as has been mentioned, the Bushiviks coin a preferred term, and a major news outlet snaps to attention and adopts it, yum-yum, please, sir, can I have another?
Perhaps it isn’t necessary or desireable for news organizations to maintain a posture of suspicion and confrontation. But if they had done a couple years back, we might not be between Iraq and a hard place, trying to drain a swamp while being nibbled on by alligators.
Maybe I’m an innocent blossom, but the first images I get when I hear of a “bomber” is not someone who goes out and bomb little unknown children to smithereens. It’s more like someone who plants bombs in deserted buildings or perhaps someone who plants bombs to kill one specific person.
I don’t think “suicide bomber” by itself is very descriptive of the terrorist act. Because I think what they do is more important than how they do it. “suicide bomber” only works because we all know that one of the things suicide bombers do, is deliberately murder civilians, women and children. Some people object to “suicide bomber” because they believe it deliberately try to gloss over this fact, like some people don’t think “gunmen”, “activists” etc. are apt descriptions of people who shoot pregnant mothers and babies in their crib.
Perhaps they’re wrong and it’s less descriptive or it is redundant. In this age of euphemisms & word bloating that is hardly something to get your knickers in a twist over. What particular is it about “homicide bomber” you find so obnoxious (to even suggest a sinister (are there any other kind?) Republican cabal)? We do all agree that there is nothing per se incorrect in “homicide bomber”. That what they do can actually be described as homicide.
You can also become “brave” out of sheer desperation too.
And although soe people seem to have a set of genes that seems to pre-destine them to become murderers and/or other scum, I’m quite sure that those who become “suicide bombers” out of desperation with their personal situation are not born “scum”.
Quite so. Their human factor is completely oppressed and made subservient to the aim to make it into a carrier of amunition.
Especially because in most cases they have nothing but their own political aims in mind.
Careful. You might get a warning from the moderators for criticizing Bush and his Hero Generals in the US army.
Salaam. A
There is something in the Islamist bullshit lore that seems almost like a worship of death. That the death part (of the bomber) is not just an unfortunate but necessary method to plant bombs but an intricate important part of it all.
Perhaps “death cult bomber”
Well that supposes that there actually is such an animal as a “Bushivik” which takes orders from central command, and not just a bunch of guys inspiring each other.
The thing about Pravda (The Truth) is not that they spewed government truths, but that they had monopoly on truth. What is needed is not just another truth, but a diversity of truths. Multipolitical news looking on the world with all kinds of goggles. It seems to me that Fox , as a minority voice, should be warmly welcomed as another voice looking on the world from another angle.
The problem is it’s redundant, and it implies that there’s another type of bomber, the type of bomber that doesn’t commit homicides. That’s an absurd implication. Just call them bombers if you want, but don’t call them exploding things bombers, or trying to blow things up bombers, or killing people with tools instead of their bare hands bombers.
Warrington, Eniskillen, Lockerbie, Omagh, Harrods, Oklahoma, Atlanta, Canary Wharf… I could go on. All of them bombers, all of them killed innocents, none of them killed themselves. Bombers. Not suicidal ones.
The suicidal ones are even more insidious. That’s what makes them worse.
Yes, I know you think it redundant. Modern corporate- & government- & PC- newspeak is chuck full of redundancies and euphemisms. The question was, what makes this particular instance so obnoxious to merit such repeated pittings and critique.
Why is it absurd to imply that there are bombers that don’t intent to kill people? Basque terrorists, for instance, have also planted many bombs. But mostly they’ve called in a warning before setting off the bombs. Some environmental and animal rights groups have planted bombs in fur-shops and SUV dealers, where clearly they didn’t intent anything but material damage. There are the clips of the PLO blowing up planes on the tarmac – after empting them. Etc. What do you call them then, to differentiate them, when a bomber is implicitly understood to be someone who set out to kill? “Non-homicide bombers”?
Also am I not correct that the “homicide” part helps describe it as a killing of innocent civilians, since a killing of a soldier can’t be termed “homicide”?
I understand Fox’s sentiment behind using the phrase. “Suicide” makes the bombing about the bomber, and therefore about his agenda and his message, whereas “homicide” makes the bombing about murder. Also, a bomb may be strapped to someone against their will, making “suicide” a complete misnomer. But as others have pointed out, “homicide” ruins the metaphor, and makes for some curious turns of phrase.
Curse the hamsters! I lost a post. A quick recap:
“homicide” doesn’t mean “murder”; it simply means one person killed another. Killing a soldier is homicide.
“Suicide bomber” tells me very little about the murderer’s message; instead it tells me about the murderer’s tactics, as does a term like “serial killer” or “mass murderer.” “Homicide bomber” doesn’t give me that information, and is therefore an inferior term.
I’d be okay with a different type of term: “massacre bomber” would be more useful, inasmuch as “massacre” usually refers to killing bunches of people indiscriminately. It’s the particular term they chose that bothers me.
The bombings I listed above were non-suicide homicidal bombings. “Homicide bomber” would logically apply to them too, as it does to (off the top of my head) Madrid, Dublin, Monaghan, Air India Flight 182, in which the bombers did not die.
As a side note, suicide bombing is not restricted to Islamists - it’s been used by the Tamils in Sri Lanka - an ethnic grouping that is mainly Hindu, but also includes Christians and Muslims - in a secular fashion, for years. Here’s a list of suicide bombings by Tamils (warning: disturbing imagery from the outset). There’s a very good Wikipedia article documenting the history of the phenomenon.
That’s mainly what pisses me off about how the phrase is used. If the Madrid Bombing was anything, it was a homicide bombing. Yet they don’t call it that. Why? Because homicide bomber is only used as a euphemism for suicide bomber.
When we were still dropping bombs on Iraq, those were homicide bombings too. Remember, homicide doesn’t mean murder. It merely means deliberate killing, regardless of the moral correctness of the action.
When Israel drops bombs on terrorist hangouts, those should be called homicide bombings too as a matter of semantic correctness.
What really gets me going, though, is the phrase “car bomber.” It’s as though the phrase glorifies the misdeed by implying that the person is so committed to the cause that they’re willing to blow up their own car. I just refer to them all generically as “boom boys.”
When someone uses the term “homicide bomber”, the follow-up question should be: “Well, did the homicide bomber at least kill himself too?”
The truth is, many in American society are fixated on revenge. They’d much rather have a bomber who doesn’t commit suicide, like McVeigh, then someone like Atta. The fact is that both actions were equally atrocious and Atta did us all a favor by ridding the world of his evil self. But since we have no one to enact revenge upon (in the form of the death penalty, ironically), we hate him more. We’d much rather go through the process of catching the bomber, putting him through a long expensive trial (paid by our tax dollars), and then murdering him.
Oh, they exist right enough! Legend has it that if you catch one, and keep your left eye closed, you can force him to tell you where he’s hidden his crock o’ shit.
