You know, I think you're pretty much in batshit crazy territory when you resort to suicide bombing.
But - and it's a stretch here - I can sort of understand it. I can see how when faced with the overwhelming military might of the US, you might rationalize sending in the bombers as a desperate act of resistance, just as Japan did with the Kamikazes in WWII. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that, I still think you're bark-chewing nuts, but I can understand the thought process and the rationalization. Whether history perceives bombers and saboteurs as partisans, freedom fighters, heroic resistance fighters - or as guerrillas and terrorists is largely dependent on who wins the conflict. Damn sure that if the Empire had suppressed the American Revolution, you can bet the Minutemen would have been hung as terrorists (and no, I'm not comparing the American Minutemen to Middle Eastern Jihadists, just making an observation). So I can see how you might think that if you win, your people will remember your name as that of a hero.
And I can see strapping on a bomb and taking a couple of the enemy along with you, if your religion and ideology incorporates the concept of heroic sacrifice or 'Martyr.' Again, I think you're baboon-assed insane to believe in the whole "blow yourself up and you get 72 virgins and lamb chops in Paradise", but then again I find pretty much all religion goofy so I don't think you're any crazier than the average Texas cultist. I can understand how, after a lifetime of being surrounded by war and death and torture and poverty and filled with religious indoctrination, you might think the Big Guy in the Sky has got something better for you if only you blow yourself up and take a few of His enemies with you. I'm not saying I agree, but I can understand how you might think this way.
I have a much harder time wrapping my mind around blowing up your own people in the market place. But, perhaps, I can understand how you might perceive them as traitors to your God, your country, your ideology. I've read the religious books, I've studied the words of the prophets, I've listened to the holy men speak and maybe, just maybe, I can understand how you might believe that what you're doing is justified in the eyes of your God.
But, seriously, I'm pretty sure that you've given up what passes for the moral high ground in even your own belief system when you strap bombs to mentally retarded people, push them into a crowd of your fellow citizens, and detonate them from a distance by remote control. No matter how I examine it, I cannot understand this evil. Win, lose, or draw - you are a murderer and a terrorist and a coward and even your God must look down on you with utter contempt and revulsion.
You are the lowest of the low. If the Hell of your religion really exists, you have well and truly earned your place in it.
So if your theology tells you that as a martyr, your reward in heaven is 72 virgins (which sounds awfully like a rape fantasy to me)... what would be the reward for female martyrs? 72 housekeepers?
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, the use of mentally retarded folks who probably can't understand the implications of their actions is beyond contemptible...
That's exactly what I thought when I saw the news. But you put it so much better than my incoherent sputtering.
ReplyDeleteJim,
ReplyDeleteYour middle eastern readership is gonna take a nosedive. I just hope you can live with that.
Nathan, I'll struggle on, somehow.
ReplyDeleteTruth of the matter is, of the thousands of Muslim people I've met in Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Israel, Morocco, Egypt, and other places that I've now forgotten, the over whelming majority were warm, wonderful people. And unfortunately, these are the people who are suffering the most under the relentless attacks of the Jihadists.
At this point, you really have to wonder what the goal of the resistance is - I suppose they could put Saddam back on the throne, it'll be disgusting but I suppose it could be done. He might even be a better ruler at this point. But seriously, what goal can the bombers have now? (I know, I know, it's a rhetorical question. Please don't lecture me on it people, I do actually have some insight into these people's thought process and ideology, but I'm just saying.)
I'm approaching this news of the use of mentally disabled people cautiously. I suppose I'm one who leans towards conspiracy theories - but I do use some thought process. For instance - how does the administration get us behind this war? Stories like this do help. It raises the hackles - makes me hate the asses even more. Yet having learned to not trust a thing coming from our news media these days - it seems plausible that this could be made up. The major news media certainly are the mouth pieces of the administration.
ReplyDeleteYet I could also see it as being true. Thomas Friedman recently wrote an op-ed from Iraq in which he reported that a member of al-Qaeda decapitated an 8-year-old girl. Again, I just don't know but it seems they have it in them.
Jim Wright,
ReplyDeleteuhhh, Saddam be bye bye. No more thrones for him in this world.
Tom, don't be obtuse. Just because he's dead doesn't mean he can't still be their fearless leader. As Jim said, it might even be an improvement.
ReplyDelete"Saddam, if you want to approve this appointment, drop disgusting bits of decayed flesh from your left arm. If you disapprove, ooze decomposing fluid from your right eye socket."
It could work.
And Jim, my experience with Middle Eastern peoples have been very similar to yours. Unfortunately for everyone, it only takes a couple of freeze-dried whack-a-loons to give them a bad rep.
Tom, what? Saddam's dead? Bitch owes me 5 dollars!
ReplyDeleteThe Minutemen would have been hanged as traitors, not as terrorists. Big difference.
ReplyDeleteI see a difference between an irregular Sunni militia that engages a US unit in combat (even if it's an ambush) and these thugs. The former are Minutemen of a sort. The latter are not. Not that there are that many coherent Sunni units like that left, but there are a few.
Although, as out-of-uniform soldiers, they would not have necessarily been afforded the protection of the Geneva Convention, had there been such a thing in the 18th century.
The "they" in that last paragraph are 18th century Minutemen.
ReplyDeleteJohn, as I noted I wasn't comparing the two (Jihadists and Minutemen), simply attempting to point out that history tends to regard the victors as freedom fighters and the losers as saboteurs and terrorists or as you said, traitors. (And treason is, of course, what the American revolutionaries were committing. However, if they had lost their bid for independence, but continued to fight a guerrilla war, they would have been terrorists at that point. Chechnya comes to mind here, at least to my mind.)
ReplyDeleteAnd then you can get into how both the British and the (soon to be) American forces used Indian Harassers in the North and the the whole funness of the Southern Campaign, and I would put many of them in the modern role of terrorists (both sides). After all, part of war isn't just making the other side die for their cause, but totally freaking them out (the Roman Phalanx, the Mongal Horsemen with their stirrups, the bouncing axes of the Francs, the Heavy Cavalry Charge, fireworks, TNT, the first tanks, fuel air explosives, etc) with terror.
ReplyDeleteBut using innocent carriers, that's a whole new low.
As to why they're blowing up their own people, it's that they remembered they were terrorists and so went back to the old playbook.
Janiece,
ReplyDelete"'e's not dead, 'e's sleepin'"