What are we supposed to be debating?
I can guess.
:rolleyes:
And how is this different from the pride American parents feel when their son the enlisted soldier goes off to Afghanistan or Vietnam and do whatever they’re told to do?
I imagine both sets of parents are feeling proud that their children value their country’s ideals so greatly that they’re willing to die for them. We may or may not agree with those ideals, but that’s irrelevant to the parents’ pride.
rjung, I seriously doubt that Lt. Calley’s parent’s are filled with pride for his killing of innocents.
Pride, huh?
Charming.
Suicide bombers are not soldiers serving their country. They are murderers. If the dead man had been a Palestinian soldier who had fallen in battle against Israeli troops, I could see the mother’s pride as justified, even honorable.
Being proud of your son trying to kill women and children is despicable.
No way, rjung. There is absolutely no moral equivalency here.
rjung: I’m in agreement with gobear and bordelond on this - There isn’t much moral equivalency in being proud of a terrorist bomber vs. a soldier. Or even a guerilla bomber. If she said she was proud of her son for blowing himself up at an Israeli army barracks or something, I might see it. At least that would be a military target. I wouldn’t necessarily call the attack on the U.S. marine compound in Lebanon all those years back a terrorist attack, for instance, as it wasn’t targetted at civilians. But her pride at the potential death of innocents is a bit appalling.
That said, I also don’t understand what we are supposed to be debating here. So this women’s a callous product of a polarized society. One of many who share her views, I’m sure. And?
- Tamerlane
It’s a truly sad story, but I add my voice to the other’s when I say “where’s the debate?”.
BTW to get the facts straight: he wasn’t a bomber, and he killed two Israeli soldiers.
efrem’s point is an excellent one. Attacking a purely military target, in the middle of a real live war, is not terrorism.
There is no debate here , because everyone here is appalled by this story. I do wish to add that I have seen no historical precedant for a mother to express joy at her son’s immanent death. The question that might stir a debate is :
Is the motivation for the mother to encourage her son’s demise spurred by the financial reward offered to Palistinian suicide bomber’s families, or is it extreme hatred for Israelis. Of course we can only speculate, but unless someone else can come up with another motive, I can only suggest that those who support her are truly scary.
So it wasn’t in the story mentioned in the OP. Try the latest attack:
So please, efrem, don’t act as if this reaction isn’t typical of family of suicide bombers of civilian targets.
I agree with you that killing innocents is nothing to be proud of. However, I suspect that the suicide bomber’s family does not see his targets as innocents – so, in their mind, their child’s sacrifice is no different than a soldier who is killed while fighting enemy soldiers.
Again, I’m not saying I hold any of these views; I’m just trying to point out where the “pride” is coming from.
As for the first part history is full of them. In antiquity you had the warriors of Sparta, in modern times you had the Soviet martyr of WWII, just to mention two out of thousands of examples where martyrdom was celebrated even by the mothers of the dead ‘heroes’ (thereby not saying neither that it’s a healthy approach to motherhood nor that it makes the phenomena morally acceptable).
As for the second part; what kind of cynical crap ass comment was that? Care to expand? You just managed to marginalize both the perpetrator and the victims by insinuating that financial gain might be the grounds for these atrocities, well done!
Sparc
Sparc,
Those two are bad examples. The Spartan mothers would bid their sons to ‘Come back with their shield or on it’. Note the first part: Come back with their shield. As in, don’t get killed if you don’t have to.
I don’t think Palestinian moms are telling there kids to ‘Come back with your bomb belt, or scattered in little peices all over the place’
This isn’t too dissimiliar from what many families tell their sons even to this day. (A father telling his son to ‘Make us proud’ before he goes off to war, or similiar.) But no sane human parent would tell his son to go get killed.
And we have Palestinian moms now supporting their little martyrs-in-training BEFORE the act. (I can see, for instance, once the little shit is dead, the parent will ‘fondly remember’ the bomber)
But to encourage their children to die BEFORE they go off to battle is virtually unprecedented. The only other historical example I can think of are the kamikaze pilots of WW2. (Who at least hit combatant targets).
Yes, but that’s what we were and are talking about, the story in the OP. In fact the OP had only mentioned this story, nothing else. You can bring up different stories, with completely different facts and reactions. However this whole thread (I’m guessing) was made to show off this story. It was called ‘Pride’ of suicide attacker’s mother not ‘Palestinian Bomber Left Suicide Note’.
In this story the attacker wasn’t a suicide bomber, and he didn’t kill civilians. It is these facts which I stated, it is these facts which I wanted to make clear, and it is these facts that are correct.
Here is what happened in this story: In the middle of a war the guy armed himself and then knowingly went on a suicide mission which killed two ‘enemy’ soldiers. People all over his village went to visit the mother (who appears to have taken an ethical hiatus) to offer their ‘sympathy’ and show ‘support’. Hamas was also involved someway with this attack. What can we conclude? Three are dead, war mentality has gripped all, and this is a really sad story in which the moral is that war all around sucks.
However, if you bring up a different story then you will bring up, different facts and different conclusions (maybe not).
**
Where did you come up with this? I have not acted that way and I have said never stated anything one way or the other about that subject.
People were asking what we are supposed to be debating here. Those posters were so outraged at the stated opinions of that mother and figured everyone else would be as well so there is nothing to debate.
Nevertheless, the thread seems to have gone on quite a while considering that there was nothing to debate.
But that’s because there is something to debate here. Some seem to think that her views are just some unfortunate result of the situation. Efrem seemed to try to say that this was not so outrageous since the son died attacking a military target.
first of all, even if he did attack soldiers, those soldiers were posted defensively, to protect civilians from attack. To attack the soldiers, is a way of getting at the civillians. So its just as bad as far as I’m concerned.
But the real outrage, of course is the idea that the mother doesn’t care who gets killed, as long as they are Israeli. Mothers, children, babies, soldiers… doesn’t matter to her. Usually, they go after civillians since we are easier to kill.
But the point I’m making is that its not just terrible to kill civillians. It’s just as terrible to kill soldiers when you initiate the attack against a defensive position.
I’m not really bothered by her hatred of Jews. I can live with that.
I’m bothered by the unfathomable corruption of a society which, for all effects and purposes, is engaging in ritual human sacrifice.
Not caring about the lives of your enemies is unhealthy. Not caring about the lives of your own children is inhuman.
Brutus (Hi there Ottto) You’ve just moved this debate to a new level. I could of course attack your argument based on the realism involved in the belief of your very own son/daughter coming back alive from battle. I could also attack it based on the idea of post construction, i.e. “I support the idea of sacrifice, I just hope it won’t be required of my child”. Both those arguments do not suffice although they do come into play in the third valid one IMHO. To understand, (I do think that is what we are trying to do here since all of us seem to condemn the act itself vehemently, thank whatever power you might believe there to be) you have to understand the basis of belief at hand. We are dealing with the nastiest aspect of eschatological belief you can find. That is to say;
[ol]
[li]The world we live in is hell alive. [/li][li]The next world is a better world. [/li][li]The next world is only for the chosen ones.[/li][li]Even among the chosen, only the ones that act good will go to the next world.[/li][li]We are righteous and chosen by God.[/li][li]The others are not chosen.[/li][li]We have been disenfranchised by the others.[/li][li]To sacrifice your own life against the ‘unchosen’ that disenfranchise the chosen is good.[/li]
Hence: any act that aims against the others will lead to a secure place in the next (better) world.[/ol]This is a nice and nifty way of doing away with any moral qualms in acting against your enemy.
Fundamentalist Muslims, Zionist Jews, Fundamentalist Christians, Nazis (don’t even dare to Godwin me for that one, there’s library meters written on this analogy), Stalinists, Zoroastrians, Spartans, Romans, Norse and Romans/[insert any of several other imperialist doctrine] have all used the above syllogism to rationalize otherwise unacceptable acts of sacrificial violence against the perceived enemy at various times in history.
On the other hand I still believe that all mothers, including the Palestinian ones would prefer a world were their children would not have to fall back on this desperate belief (in their perception). To boot, I find the underlying reasoning simple minded and idiotic on an intellectual level, but emotionally I have known hatred both on the giving and receiving end, and I know what desperation it engenders on both sides. I hope to think that I will never ever hate again in my life nor that I will ever again meet hatred to my face, but if I do I know by now what a monster it could easily make of me in both cases and if worse comes to worse hopefully my intellect will prevail as it mostly has before, and if not that an independent sensible other can stop me and my opponent from letting our irrational selves get out of hand.
That is why ‘we’ must be ultimately careful to judge either side in this conflict both by what they say and by what they do. Instead ‘we’ must try to intercept them and calm them before they hurt each other and themselves beyond what is humanly conceivable, and hell they are moving pretty fast in that direction, for they seem to have lost their senses to hatred all around.
Sparc