Suicide bombings are symptomatic of a very deep malaise, and when women and children start volunteering to blow themsleves up then the phenomenon really can’t be dismissed as the twisted actions of a bunch of evil people. For some insight into what motivates suicide bombers, one could do a lot worse than to study the case of Reem Reyashi, a middle-class mother of two who became Gaza’s first female suicide bomber in 2004 (cites: Daily Telegraph, UK right-of-centre broadsheet newspaper; Aljazeera , Qatar based independent news broadcasters).
It doesn’t get much more fucked up than that, and though I’d condemn any terrorist action whatsoever, I do feel that when it starts getting to this sort of stage then legitimate grievances should be taken seriously. All the security apparatus in the world won’t stop them all.
I think we’re meant to be debating whether or not Reason#126 why we should/can walk away from Iraq and feel as little guilt as possible is plausible or compelling enough to let us do it. I could be wrong about that though.
A soldier was flying a helicopter when one of the natives fired an Arrow at him. He reports to his CO saying, “They have no chance, they tried to take down the helicopter with a bow and arrow.” His CO replied, “Well, it is us with no chance. We cannot hope to beat someone who tries to take down a helicopter with a bow and arrow.”
I think that is the best analogy to the war going on now. It isn’t possible to beat a people that are that determined to win.
I have no idea what this means. I think you mean “determination,” which has nothing to do with morals or gravitas.
Here’s the thing, alaricthegoth: you’ve already said, repeatedly, that you want to quit. So it’s pretty clear you’re seizing on any excuse you can find to justify it. This one isn’t any good. There are plenty of good reasons to argue for leaving Iraq. “They have FEMALE suicide bombers now!” is not one. It’s not even close.
There have been instances of Palestinian female suicide bombers who were pressed into the act to atone for some perceived sexual transgression and where the alternative probably would have been an “honor” killing or total dishonor and ostracizing.
Also the recruiters of Palestinian children for suicide bombers have used extremely disgusting methods, with a combination of tricks, cheating, payment of ridiculous small sums and threats.
Other suicide bombers have been tricked or forced to it.
Such detestable methods says a lot about the groups that use them, and nothing about legitimate grievances - indeed I’d say on the contrary. A group that is willing to use such methods should be taken serious, but is not something one could ever make a deal with.
And what the heck is that about the Palestinian prime minister refusing to condemn the terrorist attack?!
That, in turn, reminds me of the (false) story of the Polish cavalry attacking the tanks of the invading Nazis. Of course, the story goes that the Nazis were so impressed that the Poles were fighting on horseback that they immediately quit and never conquered Poland. :smack:
You can beat a determined enemy. If that was impossible, wars would never end. I don’t think that’s a good summary of why Iraq is such a mess.
Gods know what you mean by ‘moral force’ (or even “gravitas”) in this context but skipping that lets look at your statement. You seem to be saying (I put in the qualifier because as always its difficult to parse anything you write) that because Iraqi insurgents are now using female suicide bombers we should ‘surrender’…by which you mean we should tuck tail and bolt for less hostile climes.
Leaving aside why we should do this solely because they are using females now as not-so-smart-bombs, the quesiton would be…how would our leaving help? Your own article says there were no US personnel involved…this was an attack against the Iraqi’s themselves. So…would the US leaving somehow magically stop these kinds of attacks? Would things be peaches and cream for the Iraqis if we bolted…or would they degenerate into a REAL civil war? And do you care? Is your primary concern simply that the US gets out (and of course the future ammo you will have if the US fails, tucks tail, and then Iraq goes tits up)?
To answer my own questions, I don’t think the US leaving will stop female suicide bombers…in fact, I think the US leaving right this minute (as you seem to be implying) would have the exact opposite effect. Not only would there be Sunni wacko blowing up Shi’ites there would probably be a new crop of Shi’ite wacko’s going directly and forcefully after Sunni’s. And we wouldn’t want to forget the Kurds and the various other spliter groups, factions, etc. And that would just be at the beginning. Then we’d have some rather large set piece battles between large bodies of militia, the Iraqi government/military, outside groups, and gods know what else.
So, unless you have a plausable theory on how female suicide bombers would somehow disappear from Iraq if the US simply left tomorrow I would say that this isn’t a very good reason. A better reason (IMHO) is if the Iraqis themselves can’t get their shit together in the next 6 months after their upcoming elections. From what I’ve read lately I’m not optimistic that their military will be in the kind of shape it needs to be in to start seriously shouldering the burden next year. I’d give the Iraqis 6 more months, then if they are still floundering after they have a fully elected government in place I’d start to seriously look at getting out. Not because some females have decided to blow themselves up. YMMV
That conversation takes place between James Caan and D.B. Sweeney in the 1987 film Gardens of Stone, set circa 1968. Caan’s character’s attitude about the U.S. Army being “in trouble” from the Vietnamese strikes me as a tad improbable, and clearly written from a post-war perspective. During the war, the biggest source of “trouble” would have been from the artificial limits on military action imposed for political reasons, as well as a general lack of a clear objective.
I disagree with you on several points here. First of all, there are no “people who send them.” They send themselves. Maybe you mean the people who help them?
Second of all, I think you’ve got it totally wrong about the will to live or die. Everyone has a will to live. That’s why people climb up on their roof during a flood, or cling to a tree for the duration of a storm, or cut off their hand when it’s trapped under a rock, for example. The will to go out there and die is much harder and much more rare. That’s what makes suicide bombers so scary. These are people strong enough to negate their will to live. I don’t think they are pathetic (although I wouldn’t say I admire them, either.)
I disagree that yet another suicide bomb is the straw to break this war’s back. It is a sign that we are not being terribly effective, though. It kills people and makes the US look really bad. But it’s not a sign that we should turn tail and run. It is a sign that we probably need to take another tactic though.
By and large suicide bombers don’t randomly decide that ‘I think I’ll go blow up a market today and see how many I can kill’. A group will ASK for folks to ‘volunteer’ (or they will force folks to ‘volunteer’ in some cases), give them the explosives and other support needed then tell them when and were to go blow themselves apart. So yes…its ‘people who send them’.
Not all people look on life the same way you (or I) do. If you are poor, desparate, with little of no prospects (or if someone is holding a figurative or literal gun to your wife/husband/mother/father/child/sibling/lovers head), and if you believe that by dieing for the cause your lot will be better in the afterlife, then suddenly suicide bombing looks much more attractive.
Just to show I’m not always a contentious bastard…I agree with you here.
I think the analogy between suicide bombers and the Columbine murderers is pretty exact. Same feeling of victimization, same need for validation, same need to be important, same disconnect between the source of their purported grievances and their proposed method of redressing those greivances, same murderous outcome.
School counselors know that suicides happen in waves or epidemics. One kid kills himself, and suddenly suicide becomes thinkable for lots of other kids. When you add in official praise and support and religious validation for “martyrdom” to the example of other people doing it and suddenly you’ve got an epidemic of suicide bombings.
I don’t think it takes any particular strength to commit suicide. History is full of people who chose certain death in order to accomplish some task, and there doesn’t appear to be any sort of correlation between the seeking of death and the seriousness of the objective. Often these people sought nothing more than their own conception of personal honor, they faced death over insults, for glory, for renown, out of loyalty to some mob-boss aristocrat, out of shame, out of fear that others would think them cowards. Dying with a smile on your lips, convinced that death isn’t really death, well, that doesn’t seem brave to me.
Alessan, there are people here who understand Arabic. You said a very rude thing. Modesty forbids me to translate it. Don’t you think it shows a disrespect for women’s bodies? If it weren’t for that part of a woman, you wouldn’t exist in the first place.
Kudos to you that you’re a dad helping out with childcare. I bet Israeli society is more advanced than American in this respect.
Are you deliberately lisping alaric’s name to imply anything? If so, I call foul. Lisping is a stereotype used to put down gays.
Not selective, but it’s a sliding scale. You’re at the really fucked up end when you have women and children suicide bombers. And suicide bombers don’t usually fit the definition of evil (i.e. willingly doing bad things while being aware of how bad they are) any more than any Western politician who’s sent an army to war. Justify to yourself that it’s the lesser of two evils, and it’s amazing what depths an ordinary person can sink to.
