That would be dangerous. They’re armed and have shown that they have no problem with killing civilians who merely disagree with them. Someone who would do that would be very brave, but wouldn’t have the sense that God gave gravel.
An American has about a 1 in 6500 chance of dying in a car accident in any given year. I couldn’t find any figures for Israel, but I’ve seen the drivers there, so I will assume the odds are at least as bad there.
Given those numbers, how much time do you think Israelis should spend worrying about terrorists, relative to the amount of time they spend worrying about being killed in car accidents? Personally, I’d think they were being irrational (or at least not doing a very good job of assessing risk) if they did devote a lot more time and effort to worrying about suicide bombers than they do to worrying about traffic safety.
Those numbers are so low *because *we worry about them so much.
Look at it this way - relatively few people die in fires. By your logic, because of this govenments shouldn’t insist on fire codes and shouldn’t pay for fire departments, because fire obviously isn’t that big a problem.
I’m not saying that. But if a government is spending 10 times as much on fire protection as it is on trying to protect people from car accidents, even though a lot more people are being killed by car accidents than by fires, something’s not right. Likewise, if a person is spending a lot of time and energy worrying about being killed in a fire while not worrying about car accidents at all, something’s not right in their assessment of risks. I’m not saying governments and people shouldn’t worry about terrorism, but they should keep those worries in proportion to the actual risk.
If you want, look at it this way - people are always going to worry about traffic accidents, no matter what anyone does. But if you also have terrorism, then people are going to worry about traffic accidents *and *terrorism. That’s twice as much to worry about. There’s a lot more a government can do about terrorism than it can about traffic accidents. Terrorism can be eradicated; traffic accidents, unfortunately, are a fact of life.
Besides, there’s a psychological element here. Most people believe that they can prevent traffic accidents - by keeping alert, driving the speed limit, not drinking and driving, by looking both ways before they cross the street. But what can you do about a guy blowing himself up next to you in a mall? It’s the sheer randomness of terrorist attacks, and the utter helplessness with which the average citizen faces them, that makes them so terrifying. And since the purpose of terrorism is to inspire terror, you can see why it’s considered a nation’s top priority to put a stop to it.
A car accident is an accident. Most people do not go out and intentionally get involved in car “accidents”. A suicide bombing, though, is an intentional act. It seems like it should be more preventable, and more aggravating to the public since people are actually choosing to be involved.
We have a sort of a national zero tolerance policy vis-a-vis people trying to kill us. I think most nations have similar policies, and if they don’t, they should.
A government’s first priority is protecting its citizens from outsiders; its second priority is protecting them from themselves. Letting others hurt you at whim sets a bad precedent.
I get the impression that people tolerate it, because I do not see widespread protesting, or even condemnation of it.
As for the second part of your post…I am not sure. I would like to think that I would stand up against the bombings, but I really can’t say since I am not in that situation. One thing I can say is that history has many examples of strong individuals standing up and organizing people against what seem like insurmountable odds. Maybe someone is in the process of doing so as I type, but for some reason I doubt it.
And, like all other zero-tolerance policies, it causes problems and offenses against common sense. I’d prefer a policy of dealing with risks that takes the probability of them happening into account, and doesn’t spend a lot of money on preventing something horrible but unlikely while ignoring something much more mundane but more likely.
The reason it is not protested is because a protest is the perfect place to kill lots of people with a suicide bomb. Do you want to be a headline or do you want your kids/siblings/parents to be headlines, ‘Suicide Bomber detonates in the middle of anti-suicide bomber rally.’?
Yes, sometimes it occurs, and it IS occurring in some places, that was the entire point of the awakening council, but protests for the most part are useless regardless of the cause. Asking why people don’t stand up to it is the same as asking why they don’t stand up to crack dealers in American inner-cities? Because they have to keep living there and the crack dealers will murder them, that’s why. But the reality is people DO stand up to crack dealers and they DO stand up to suicide bombers, they just don’t use the useless counter-productive tactic of protesting.
You know, while i really think this phrase is trite, cliche, and mostly used as a joke, I think I can say in all seriousness that if you don’t stand up and protest against the terrorists…then the terrorists have already won.
Yes, I agree. A “protest” where people carry around signs that say “end suicide bombing now”, is not going to be of much value. However, a protest (or maybe revolution is a better word) where people stand up to the corrupt governments that are either directly or tacitly approving of the suicide bombings might be more effective. Get those governments out of there and get governments in that will give a majority of the people the basic things they need to survive and I think we would see a drop in terrorism. Instead of celebrating suicide bombers and their families, penalize them and reward people who turn in suicide bomb plots.
We aren’t going to see any change unless it comes from the people…from the bottom up. We can’t go in there and fight terrorists and expect anything to come of it if the people who live there are not willing to stand up for themselves. Is it a huge and daunting task? Yes. But, it has happened. Someone just needs to get the ball rolling…unless, of course I am wrong and a majority of people in those countries want things to continue as they have been for years…
In some places, the suicide bombers, and their families, are feted. They live within the population, and clearly a large portion of the population feels that they are attacking the enemy. Protests, smotests - if a large majority of the population hated the bombers, their hideouts would be exposed. Perhaps they aren’t out of fear, perhaps out of agreement.
Consider school shootings in the US. The response to them hasn’t been just protests, but a request for kids to tell teachers about kids acting suspiciously. At least a few very possible attacks have been stopped in this way, so this is a case where the general population is against it, and often does something.
I don’t think this is a valid or useful comparison. First of all, the song you quoted is not endorsed by the government. If it were, I think we would see a an uprising against it in the US. There were, in fact, protests against a lot of the violent rap tunes that come out. Number two, the song you quoted is not about praising and honoring a murderer…it is about being a murder. I think that is an important distinction. A suicide bomber writing a song about being a suicide bomber is one thing, but to write a song honoring a suicide bomber is another.
Plenty of countries don’t have terrorism problems at the moment. Obviously, you can’t eradicate terrorism as a whole (insomuch as you can eradicate any form of warfare), but you can win your country a respite of a decade or two.