Leaving aside all the emotional aspects of this issue, it seems to me that suicide bombing, seen purely as a tactic of war, is not very effective.
You lose all your best, most devoted (and devouted) followers in one mad mission.
As a result you may kill a few of the opposition’s civilians (as in the WTC attack or Israel) but you don’t harm the military.
If you don’t harm the military, you ain’t gonna win the war no matter what happens.
If these suicide deaths aren’t being done for military gain, what do they achieve?
Propaganda?
Suicide bombing seems like a bad tactic of war because:
you kill your own best fighters
every suicide bomber that blows himself up is one less to worry about
suicide bombers usually go for “soft targets” ie non-military ones. But this is counter-productive because if you blow up a bunch of kids in a disco in Jerusalem, or a bunch of innocent workers in NY, you will inevitably harden the resolution of the enemy who will then strengthen their military.
This puts you even further away from your goal to destroy the enemy. Because they will get stronger.
suicide bombing may have had some shock factor when it first appeared when the Japanese kamikaze pilots used it in WW2. But these days I think we’ve kinda accepted that some people in the world are willing to resort to it as a tactic of war. Since we’ve accepted this then the propaganda value of a suicide bombing has decreased.
I guess a suicide bombing in 2002 ain’t worth as much as it was in 1945. Inflation?
I admire the confidence and self-belief a suicide bomber must have but I don’t see the point in terms of hard military gains.
Suicide bombing isn’t a military tactic. It is a terrorist tactic. It is not designed to lead to a war fought between armys. It is designed to create fear and unease in a population. Hopefully (to a terrorist) that sense of fear will make people more likely to negotiate you, bring you the kind of recognition that you need in order to be taken seriously and to demoralize the other side.
And, let’s face it, suicide bombing is the sort of thing you do when you feel you have no other way to get any recognition for your cause.
And it seems to be working. Palenstinians have gained a lot of recognition and political clout that they probably wouldn’t have had withouh suicide bombs. They’ve established themselves as a force that can’t be ignored. I’m not saying it is right (it obviously isn’t) but it is amazeingly effective.
is to destabilize the target government by creating among the population the feeling that the government can’t solve the problem and can’t protect the people. Suicide bombing is very effective at this. Imagine being afraid to go to malls and restaurants and stores because the person next to you might explode themselves. Who do you blame, after the terrorists? The government, for not stopping it.
Look at what’s happened in Israel. As the bombings increase in frequency, Sharon’s government is pushed to more extreme military action against the Palestinians just to prove to Israelis that they’re in charge, at the cost of support from the rest of the world. The U.S. is forced to distance itself a little from Israel every time there’s another attack on the Palestinians; the Arab nations surrounding Israel feel a little more justified in their anti-Israel stance. And as more extreme acts by the Israeli military fail to stop the bombings, Sharon’s government looks ineffectual and drops in popular support (I believe Sharon is at the lowest point in his government now, and people are already talking about Netanyahu stepping in).
There’s a little Darwin Award in every suicide bombing.
Terrorism is a type of coersion, and is rightly viewed by most of us as a repellent form of political discourse.
I would offer to hansel an alternative view. Israel’s response to terrorism is quite pragmatic. While the plight of the poor Palestinians is underscored with every massive retaliation to their terrorist acts, what the Israelis are doing is eroding the Palestinian land base. They’re gonna give it back, maybe, but if they do it will be at the bargaining table, where the Israelis will be in the position of granting a “concession” in the form of the Palestinians’ own territory.
That’s one less actual concession the Israelis have to make, and that’s one reason why Israel always goes into and returns from negotiations with a superior bargaining position.
This lesson has been dropped on the Palestinians for thirty years now, but apparently they are too disorganized or too wedded to their actual, stated mission to destroy Israel to change their political tactics.
Personally, I think the most memorable act of suicidal political protest was the self-immolation of those Vietnamese monks back in '63. They hurt nobody but themselves, yet the act was a chilling and eloquent political statement. Suicidal Palestinian lads and Palestine in general could partially assuage my personal antipathy if they focused on this form of protest rather than by killing innocents, which enrages me and a whole lot of other people.
“No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making other bastards die for their country.” attributed to Gen. George S. Patton
sailor, you must be thinking of the opening scene of the movie “Patton”. George C. Scott’s address to the troops is one of the great movie speeches of all time, even if had been heavily bowdlerized from the original.
The original text is a fun read, too, although it doesn’t contain the famous movie line “The purpose of war is not to die for your country. The purpose of war is to make the other poor dumb sonofabitch die for his country”.
It’s an interesting point, and I cut from my own response a bit about how the suicide bombings may destabilize the Israeli government, but also destabilize the nascent Palestinian government because, every time a suicide bomber goes off, everyone gets a little more sceptical about the possibility of any sort of civilized government resulting from the Palestinian side. I didn’t say that suicide bombings were a winning strategy, just that they’re effective at changing the terms of the debate. As in a chess game, they represent a posture by one side that the other can’t ignore without imperilling themselves.
Sharon’s government may come out ahead, but it’s a dangerous strategy that could easily fail if the U.S. pulls its support. I doubt that the Saudi proposal would have received as much serious attention when Barak was negotiating with them.
…And I certainly agree with you, hansel that the bombings destabilize Israeli politics. They also appear on the surface to be having a positive effect on international opinion, judging by American and Saudi Arabian moves lately.
One hardly needs to point out that the best way to give credence to terrorism is to cave in to the terrorists’ demands. I was originally confused by the United States’ recent reversal on the concept of a Palestinian state, but I’m beginning to think that the adjoining clause about “cessation of all acts of violence” may offer a degree of leverage over the Palestinians that nobody to date has enjoyed.
Slight nitpick. The kamikaze attacks in WW2 were not terrorist attacks, per se., nor was the “shock factor” particularly important. They were military attacks that were, although clearly a desperation move, really quite effective. You could take out a whole warship for the price of one relatively cheap airplane (human factors aside).
A nitpick to a nitpick. Actually kamikaze attacks are not that great, because it’s not the airplane that’s expensive it’s the pilot. It’s much harder to come by a good pilot than it is to come by a Zero.
Agreed, and that’s why I said “human factors aside.” But then there’s also the crew of the target ship to consider. Even if many of them were rescued, you’d still have to consider it a favorable exchange rate. But as I also said, it was a desperation tactic, which probably would not have been considered worthwhile if the Japanese fleet wasn’t already on the ropes.
In any case, in the OP, I wasn’t talking about terrorism generally. I was talking specifically about suicide bombing which is just one type of terrorism.
Terrorism may or may not be justified depending on the circumstances. For example I would say that the French Resistance were justified in using terrorism during WWII but they would have been stupid to use suicide bombing.
Why blow up your best men? Why not just plant a bomb? You would get the same amount of damage but without killing your own soldiers.
The suicide bombings may destabilise the Israeli govt but no more so than ordinary bombings would. And in any case, no amount of bombing, suicide or otherwise, is going to destroy the state of Israel which is presumably the aim of Hamas.
I understand that terrorism is designed to create fear and unease in a country’s population as even sven said, but wouldn’t ordinary terrorism achieve this just as well?
A few Palestinians may get caught while in the act of planting a bomb but many would get away with it and live to fight another day (or plant more bombs another day).
Contrast this with suicide bombing where you know for a fact that each bomber is going to die.
I just don’t see what suicide bombing achieves that couldn’t be achieved by regular bombing.
Maybe the odd “spectacular” like the WTC is better done by suicide bombing - they tried to bring the WTC down with an ordinary bomb once before but failed. But for ordinary, everyday terrorism like what the Palestinians generally go in for I think suicide bombing is pointless.
I remember last year a suicide bomber blew himself up next to an Israeli armoured car but he got it wrong and didn’t harm anyone. All he accomplished was to walk out into the street and blow himself up. Reminded me of the suicide squad in “Life of Brian” - “that showed 'em huh?”.
Okay, strictly considering it as a terrorist tactic, there are a couple of things going for suicide bombings:
[list=1]
[li] They’re suicide bombings: someone believes in their cause enough to die for it, which makes a bigger impression than setting it off anonymously. When the PIRA set off bombs in London, the British government could justifiably call them cowards; when the bomber takes himself with you, “coward” seems like an empty insult.[/li][li] Suicide bombs are more reliable: you’ve got dynamite, you’ve got a detonator, you’ve got someone to set it off, and it’s mobile. It can wander around looking for an ideal location to explode that may be a momentary opportunity, and blow up as soon as it gets there. The lack of a timer or remote detonator makes it a more reliable device. It also doesn’t sit around for any length of time, giving someone a chance to discover and disarm it.[/li][li] It’s less suspicious than a bomb-sized package laying out somewhere public. Which is less suspicious: A guy in a bulky coat, or a guy who walks into the middle of a restaurant, sets down a suitcase, and immediately walks out and turns a corner?[/li][li] If your recruit’s primary virtue is his willingness to die for the cause, then why not use him? It’s my understanding that the actual bombers are not regular members of the terrorist organizations–it’s never the bomb-maker who blows himself up, so it’s not your best soldiers doing it. The organization finds someone willing to do it, and shows them how. The great tragedy of the Palestinian refugee camps is that they produce no shortage of people willing to become suicide bombers if given the chance. The Palestinians greatest strength is their pool of discontent.[/li][li] At least in Israel’s case, it increases racial friction between Israelis and Palestinians, which plays into the terrorist’s hands by sowing fear among the target population. Imagine that you’re a jew who gets onto a bus, and at the next stop, a scruffy, twenty-year old Palestinian male gets on, wearing a bulky coat and looking around intensely, then stands next to you. What’s the obvious thought?[/li][/list=1]
This brings us back to the propaganda value of a suicide bombing. It seems like we hear about Palestinian suicide bombers at a rate of one a week or more. Did you know that there is actually a “school for suicide bombers” in Palestine?
Suicide bombing has become a part of their culture somehow. This indicates that there must be something wrong with that culture. Palestinians are being brought up to believe that there is nothing nobler than to die as a suicide bomber for your country.
This can’t be good.
I can see the advantage of having a mobile device but I don’t think this advantage is so great that it justifies killing the carrier. That carrier may be able to wander around dropping off several devices a day. Imagine if you had a hundred Palestinians wandering around dropping off parcels at random locations - some of them would work, some wouldn’t.
But, more importantly, some of your bomb carriers would escape.
Why kill them on the first mission?
I agree you won’t get the same success rate. A lot more of your bombs will not work - either the bomber will be caught or the bomb itself will be discovered. But at least you have some chance of your bomber getting away with it, as opposed to no chance.
Because those idealistic young fools are the kind of people who will carry the movement forward into the next generation. If I were a terrorist overlord I wouldn’t want all my young idealists dead.
The bomb-makers tend to be older, more experienced guys. They aren’t “field workers”. They are the scientists behind the operation, they make the bombs. So they aren’t the best soldiers.
The best soldiers are the ones who are actually willing to fight and die.
I think I see the problem here, Jojo: you’re failing to appreciate that, to many in Palestine, life is cheap. I mean really cheap. There’s no need to preserve the lives of the “soldiers”, as you call them, because there’s already a huge pool of them, waiting to do something for the cause, and they bring to the cause little more than their willingness to die for it.
You’re thinking like a general in an industrialized nation, where a trained soldier is the most expensive thing in your army. That’s not the case in Palestine, where the explosives are probably more expensive and difficult to obtain than someone willing to blow themselves up. The Palestinians don’t have the money, the equipment, or the space to train an army; instead, they’ve got enough to buy some bombs, and no shortage of volunteers to make sure that every single one counts.