The recent suicide attack that killed 4 American soldiers in Iraq led me to ponder the rational behind suicide attacks.
I can’t understand it. What do they hope to accomplish? They certainly aren’t going to win by doing this, and they won’t gain any sympathy for their plight either. All it does it strengthen their opponents resolve against them while making themselves look bad in the process.
The Palestinians have been the ones mostly carrying out suicide attacks because of perceived injustices from Israel. Couldn’t the Palestinians do something more productive? Why not set themselves on fire publicly like the Buddhist monks in Vietnam? Why not follow the methods of Gandhi and commit non violent civil disobedience?
Homicide Bombers! We just keep bombing the hell out of them, but our bombers, unlike bees, can sting repeatedly. We’ll see who runs out of bombers first.
The Tamil Tigers are the ones who do most of the worlds suicide bombing.
I guess I don’t see what there is to not understand about it. Soldiers fight and die. What’s wrong with knowing in advance that you are one of the ones who will die? If the same damage could be done without the bomb being hand delivered, then perhaps the Tamils would eschew suicide bombing.
Personally, I can’t understand why observers don’t look at this and say, “Damn, these people are really committed. Maybe we should consider their point of view instead of just steam rolling them.”
Some points of view aren’t that valid, e.g. Saddam supporters. Some are, e.g. Palestinians.
Well, they see some accomplishment in carrying out suicide bombings the same way we do not see any accomplishment. They’re doing it for a reason, we all have to understand that.
For starters, because as a soldier possessing some modicum of intelligence you know that it will serve your cause better by actively engaging the enemy on terms where your loss of life is not guaranteed and there is a chance to for you to fight another day. If you are not an intelligent soldier, then you may well be a perfect candidate for such a mission.
A most disturbing finding is that a large percentage of the Palestinian homicide bombers are well edumacated. While this does not blow my hypothesis out of the water, it begs the question as to what sort of maggots can be persuaded into murdering innocent civilians.
Suicide is an escape. Escape from working to improve things, escape from responsibility for your actions.
If a guy goes and shoots all his former coworkers after he gets fired, then turns the gun on himself, do you say he was really commited, and maybe we should see if he was justified? Or was he likely just trying to escape from his life, and the consequences of his actions?
There is nothing courageous about murdering innocent people, and then escaping from any consequences.
I’d bet it has something to do with being willing to kill and die for a cause. Like regular soldiers fighting on the front lines, except that the suicide bomber knows for certain that he’ll die, whereas the regular soldier is willing to, but might not.
I don’t agree with it, though. Most especially when it’s done in crowded marketplaces filled with innocent civilians. And today’s suicide bombing of the American soldiers, well…yes, the American soldiers were combatants, but it was still a rotten, underhanded thing to do. Just nasty.
Yes, like those cowards at Thermopylae. They knew they were beat, they should have just given up.
So, you disprove your own point and attempt to salvage it by jumping into an ad hominem with both feet. It’s hard to believe that there was a dot-com crash with such sharp minds in Silicon Valley.
Right. The Greeks went to Thermopylae to murder innocent civilians and then take their own lives to avoid the consequences. “Remember Thermopylae!” is the battle cry of every disgruntled office worker who picks off his boss and the girl who refused his advances, before escaping from his ineffectual existence.
See, I thought the Greeks were fighting not against civilians, but against an immense army.
I thought they were going not to kill themselves, but to fight for their lives with all their might.
I thought they were fighting against incredible odds, against a superior military force, knowing the odds, and yet refusing to just lay down and die.
That refusal to lay down and die is why they were courageous. If the Spartans had instead taken a hidden route out of the pass, gone to a Persian city and slaughtered the civilians, and then killed themselves before the Persian army could reach them, they would not have been courageous. Not in any way, and not even close.
If you seriously harbor such delusions of heroism about suicide and murder, I feel sorry for you.
when you’re faced with a bigger and tougher opponent where you know you’ll lose it’s always best to give a swift kick between the legs. there really isn’t much point in trading blows fairly…
The “bombing part” is easy to understand, it’s the “suicide” part that Westerners don’t understand. But blowing yourself up while taking out enemy soldiers surely beats getting killed by the enemy’s bombs.
After all, if the very severity and “committment” of the attack ought to make the observer “consider their point of view”, why should it matter (accepting that analysis as true) what that point of view might be?
If they are blowing themselves up for Palistine, or Saddam, or Mickey Mouse - why and how can we judge anything positive about their base cause from their “commitment”?
If a fellow blows himself up, killing dozens of (say) your relatives, because he is part of a strange cult that thinks Mickey Mouse ordered him to - would you think, “Damn, these people are really committed. Maybe we should consider their point of view instead of just steam rolling them.”? Or would you instead think “Damn, these people are nuts - we must stop them before they take more innocent lives”?
Quite so. My resopnse in more like "maybe we should wipe out every last trace of the people who did this, their culture, their homes, their history, but especially the ghastly “religion” and the “holy men” who inspired them to do it.
All the posts in this thread assume that the suicide/homicide bombers are doing so due to their “commitment to their cause”. I have no information or special insight that would suggest that this is not so, however…
What if the Fedayeen are rounding up a couple of families in a given community, taking the father from one of the families, and telling him he must drive this vehicle up to that coalition checkpoint, and press this button, and if he doesn’t, his wife and children will be killed.
If he does, the Fedayeen proceed to the next head of household. If he doesn’t, they kill the father, wife, and children of the first family and proceed to the next head of household.
Do we know that this isn’t the case? Is it possible that these Iraqi civilians were beside a rock, and now the US coalition has put them between the rock and a hard place?
Good points, **AZCowboy, ** and from what I’ve heard about how Hussein gained control of Iraq, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if that’s what was happening in some cases.
I definetly agree that blowing up civilians is dispicable and does nothing to help a particular cause, it is just pure hate and it spreads hate. Now the Iraqi situation is a little different to me. What exactly are the rules of whats fair when engaged in warfare? Iraq is at an obvious disadvantage; they will do anything to level the field. If civilians were not a factor, we would just bomb the enemy to death and give them no chance of a fight, is that considered fair? Where does it say in the rulebook that planes, bombs and guns are the only way to fight? War is dirty, not fair.
Lets say a country was invading the US and WE were the smaller army, wouldn’t we take any means possible to fight the opposition? Maybe we arent the suicidal type, but I’ll bet we would resort to any means necessary.
Well, the rationale behind the suicide bombing in the OP is that you lost one man, the enemy lost 4 men. That’s a pretty good trade off. It also teaches your enemy that he can never let his guard down, and that anyone is a potential hostile. So, you can say goodbye to any chances that some of the occupied population will cooperate with the occupying army…the occupiers can’t trust them.
