Ah Doghouse Reilly, if anyone here can twist words it can be you.
You seem to be confusing the word “victim” with the phrase “innocent victim” the bomber is a victim is the sense of the word that they too have died, not in the sense that they are innocent. Please look up the word.
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Don’t try to bait me into this argument again.
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No, I am not. I know I have trouble with spelling and sentence structure, but I had made it very clearly (in present and past posts) that they should NOT be credited with a sence of morality.
“Suicide bomber” and “suicide bombing” seem adequately descriptive without hinting at justification, unless you somehow feel that suicide is in itself an ennobling act. I don’t share that view, myself.
“Homicide bombing” may be simply inaccurate if no-one but the bomber himself (or herself) dies, which does occasionally happen. In that case, one might have to say the more ponderous “attempted homicide bombing.”
Surely there’s a distinction to be made between a person who carries a bomb into a crowded area and detonates it versus a person who carries a bomb into an area and adds a timer to detonate later. They’re both reprehensible, of course, but I see no reason to modify the term “suicide bomber,” which is sufficiently distinctive and descriptive. The latter form of terrorism is sufficiently described as simply “bombing” or “planting a bomb”, but it also could be called “homicide bombing” or “attempted homicide bombing”. Why wouldn’t the term “homicide” apply?
I’m suspicious of any attempt to modify a term on the basis of morality rather than accuracy, and I despise attempts to add more complexity for no good reason. Using “homicide bombing” as a descriptive term is a bad idea.
Actually, I find “suicide bombing” sufficient on other grounds because when casualty numbers are given, typically only the number of innocent victims are counted, not the bomber himself/herself, who death is simply assumed but not counted. If the bomber’s life meant nothing to himself/herself, it seems fair to ignore its value when totalling the damage.
The dictionary is descriptive not prescriptive. In other words, it mirrors common useage, it doesn’t enforce it.
The standard meaning of “victim” is “innocent victim”*
Point of fact: I live less than 15 miles from Columbine High School. The one that had the (in)famous school shooting a few years back? Several idiots in the local media started saying there were 15 victims, not 13. It took people almost no time to realize that they were counting the murderers. The entire state burst into flames. When some idiot wanted to do a memorial to the victims, he put up 15 markers. Parents of the murdered children came out en-masse and destroyed two of the markers. One of the parents (Daniel Roarbach’s (sp) ) was quoted as saying that “The murderers aren’t victims, they’re victimizers” (paraphrased).
QED: the word victim can mean any dead person, but it doesn’t, in practice, mean that.
In a homicide bombing, we all agree that the people murdered by the homicidal maniac are the victims. If we also allow (for the sake of argument only) that the homicial maniac is a victim, who’s the vicitmizer?
Sorry. Victim is a powerful word, and I refuse to let it apply to murderers without commenting on it.
Fenris
*For fun I looked it up anyway, and you’re still wrong. Definitions 1-3 all have the standard meaning of someone killed by another (be it person or circumstance). It’s not until you get to #4 that you get “Victim of his own undertaking”.
The reason I disagree with you is that suicide is generally thought of as only the taking of one’s own life. Assuming I knew nothing about the current situation, I’d assume a suicide bomber was one who committed suicide (not homicide) by blowing himself up.
Besides, the more serious crime is always the one used to describe the act. If someone robbed a bank and drove recklessly in the getaway, the media would describe him as a bank-robber, not a reckless driver. OJ was described as an alleged murderer, not an alleged house-breaker, even though he allegedly broke into Nichole’s house to kill her. To be consistant “suicide” bombers should be described by the more serious crime of homicide.
I am afraid it is you are the one that is wrong. I looked in my “World Book” dictionary (1992) and the first definion I recieved was:
A) A person or animal sarificed, injured, or destroyed: victims of war, victims of an accident .
It does not imply wheater or not the subjects are innocent, so innocence must not be a factor in defining a victim. Just because YOU have taken the word out of context does not mean I have used it as an incorrectly.
#1) But as I said, dictionaries are DEscriptive not PREscriptive, so we can play dictionary vs dictionary all day and it won’t change the fact that the common useage of victim carries the connotation of “from an outside source” or “innocent victim”.
Think of it this way. If every single person in the entire world started using the word “brown” to describe the color of the sky on a clear day, but the dictionary hadn’t caught up yet and still claimed that “brown” was the color of tree trunks, the dictionary would be wrong, everyone else would be right. The standard usage of victim (at least in the US) is “innocent victim”.
#2) You still haven’t answered who the victimizer is in a homicide bombing.
Just because you have thought of it that way, does not mean it is the most common usage, I would think my own use of the word is a better fit.
However to start on a disscussion about this would be moot, since I meant the word “victim” to fit MY definition and since the dictionary backs me up on that definion, all other definions that could be thought up are inncorrect (just in this singular case).
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If you concider that to be the standard definion then I am not using the “standard” definion, so you still are wrong and have taken it out context.
If Palestinian society is “fucked up,” isn’t Israeli society just as fucked up? The Zionists did try to rid all of what they considered Israel of Palestinians; they conducted terrorist activities, committed atrocities, and Israel today demonstrates a total disregard for Palestinians via the living conditions in the camps, the holding of suspects for six months without charging them, the abuse of prisoners, etc., etc., etc.
Why are we so brainwashed that we only listen to praise of the Israelis and condemnation of the Palestinians? Israel and its Zionist predecessors most certainly killed innocents but they’ve been painted as “freedom fighters.”
Do Israelis enjoy killing Palestinians? Do they advertise the idea that murderers of Palestinians will get 72 virgins to wait on them in the afterlife? Do Israelis dance in the street and pass out candy when they hear of large numbers of Palestinians dying? Do Israeli families benefit from cash rewards when their sons kill Palestinians?
We’re not brainwashed–but after 9/11 and the attendant Palestinian celebrations, I’d say that that particular community has gained itself a spot on our Permanent Shit List. You can hardly deny that they fucked themselves up in that regard at least.
Oh, boo fucking hoo. You think this is comparable to tactics of deliberate civilian murder? As far as I can tell, Israeli military and police forces treat Palestinian suspects a hell of a lot better than the Palestinian Authority and its supporting cast of lynch mobs.
And that makes it all OK. You don’t need to address anything I just said. Yeah. :rolleyes: It must be nice to be a brainwashed fanatic. So much time you save cogitating each day.
It must be nice to be a brainwashed knee-jerk apologist. Ever hear of the Irgun, the Stern Gang, the Hagannah? Ever wonder how you would feel if you were a Palestinian? Ever question anything, at all?
Personally, I don’t have a problem with making value judgements. Heck, a preponderance of my judgements involve questions of value.
Let’s see. Nuclear war. Genocide. Casual torture as state policy. The willful blindness of the fanatic. I condemn these things. Wholesale, retail and at the producer level.
I condemn other things as well, though. US climactic policy: Fucked Up! Popular American attitudes towards sex vs. violence in the media. Way Fucked Up!
Dude!
(IMO)
I also have sufficient faith in human potential to castigate Arab society for its insularity and growing barbarity. Like I said, it can be cured.