Comments on: Spectacularly missing the point

By: soru

soru — Fri, 20 May 2005 10:03:00 +0000

If what an author wrote would be an apologia if they held certain beliefs not addressed in the text, it is hard to see it as entirely wrong to describe it as one.

Certainly, if it was written cynically, it would be a cynical apologia, but that's not the charge.

soru

By: Matthew

Matthew — Fri, 20 May 2005 08:04:00 +0000

Surely the suicide is important, in the sense that it makes you think, ‘if this person is willing to die to kill me then he really wants to kill me’.

By: john b

john b — Fri, 20 May 2005 07:52:00 +0000

Only if she’s doing so cynically despite sharing Chris and S2’s beliefs (and there’s no evidence in her column that she doesn’t think it’s bad, anyway).

By: soru

soru — Fri, 20 May 2005 07:46:00 +0000

In that light, Norm's article does seem very much on the ball. To spend an entire article discussing an essentially bogus reason why suicide terrorism is bad is to imply that those who do think it is bad are wrong, or, worse, unsophisticated.

soru

By: john b

john b — Tue, 17 May 2005 07:00:00 +0000

I'm convinced by Chris and S2, on reflection.

This still means Norm is being a bit silly, though: the proper criticism of Bunting's article is that she has come up with the wrong reasons for why suicide bombing is viewed as it is, not that she's an terrible terror apologist.

By: Squander Two

Squander Two — Tue, 17 May 2005 06:54:00 +0000

Chris is right: it’s not the suicide that’s important, it’s the disguise. We can run from an unattended bag. But we can’t avoid other people.

By: Benjamin

Benjamin — Tue, 17 May 2005 03:40:00 +0000

Geras's writing gets so wearisome at times.

His "more in sadness than in anger" shtick is tiresome.

It's ironic that the Guardian is quite holier than thou anyway... so Geras doing his own holier than thou number on a Guardian piece is a rather turgid double whammy!

The world has now got the message, loud and clear, that this retired Manchester academic is the most pious man in the world of blogs.

By: Chris Lightfoot

Chris Lightfoot — Mon, 16 May 2005 14:39:00 +0000

I think the semantic discussion is missing the point. The reason that people regard suicide bombing as uniquely awful is, I think, that a person carrying a bomb which they then detonate is better able to deliver it to its target than other terrorist tactics. Suicide bombing is more frightening and despicable because it is more personal and seems more effective. So, basically, I think the reason people see suicide bombing as uniquely awful is because they find it more frightening than other types of violence.

This is also, I think, why the kamikaze were so hated during the Pacific War -- in an age before guided missiles, of course they were terrifying.

(I don't think, by the way, that suicide bombing is a particularly effective tactic, though it may be in the face of the constraints under which the Iraqi "resistance" are operating. Specifically, I believe that the command-wire detonated bombs used by the IRA in Northern Ireland in the 1970s were much more deadly, though it seems that the British Army managed to devise countermeasures for them eventually.)

By: Natalie Solent

Natalie Solent — Mon, 16 May 2005 14:34:00 +0000

Neither Ed nor Andrew Bartlett's comments were visible to me when I just posted. In response to Andrew Bartlett, (1) I don't know whether the majority view the suicide aspect of a suicide bombing as morally significant. All I know is that quite a lot of people don't. I never did. (2) Yours is quite a good argument. But it isn't the one that Bunting is putting forward. She is saying that the suicide aspect is not so alien after all i.e. assuming it is significant.

Emphasis on/denial of the suicide aspect as morally significant does not map neatly onto pro/anti Iraq war.

While I vigorously hope that suicide bombers against American soldiers are defeated I feel far less animus against them than against the deliberate killers of civilians.

By: Natalie Solent

Natalie Solent — Mon, 16 May 2005 14:17:00 +0000

As Jim Bliss surmises (in his excellent example about car bombings) most people refer to them as suicide bombers because that seems to be the general practice. There are many phrases in common use that are inaccurate or contain assumptions that I don't like, but life is short and I only have time to argue about a very few examples. There was a push a while back to call them "homocide bombers" but that term had its own definitional problems and it seems to have faded away.

The glorification of suicide is certainly culturally and psychologically worthy of note. Both Bunting and Hari are correct to say that the phenomenon is neither new nor confined to Arabs or Muslims. (Not that the Tamil Tigers, Imperial Rome or Imperial Japan are particularly appealing cultures.) But Bunting slips from "look how the Christian martyrs killing themselves shocked the Romans" to suggesting that our shock at Palestinian "martyrs" killing other people in pizza parlours is similar. No it isn't, in any significant way

And her last paragraph is tosh. I was left wondering whether I ought to feel grateful to the dear suicide bombers for reminding my unworthy deracinated western self, prone to drop bombs out of planes with a merry laugh, of the true messiness of war.

Incidentally, Hari has no right to say that British men were "murdered" by the kamikaze. Imperial Japan committed many crimes but that wasn't one of them. The kamikaze attacked ships of war in time of war.