Suicide Bombing As A Strategic Choice example essay topic

Suicide bombing is the crack cocaine of warfare. It does not just inflict death and terror on its victims, it intoxicates the people who sponsor it. It unleashes the deepest and most addictive human passions the thirst for revenge, the desire for religious purity, the longing for earthly glory and eternal salvation. Suicide bombing is not just a tactic in a larger war: it overwhelms the political goals it is meant to serve. It creates its own logic and transforms the culture of those who employ it. Who is not familiar with the term Suicide Bombing, a bomb attack on people or property, delivered by a person who knows the explosion will cause his own death.

The Arab press generally refers to a suicide bomber as a "Human Bomb". The Bush administration briefly tried to get journalists to use the term "Homicide Bombing" but it did not gain currency. Suicide bombing usually but not always targets poorly-guarded nonmilitary facilities and personnel. It can be a military tactic, a political one or a mixture of the two.

It may qualify as terrorism where the intention is to kill, main or terrorism a predominantly civilian target population, or fall within the definition of an act of war where it is committed against a military target under war conditions. As a political tactic, suicide bombings send a message of impassioned opposition to enemy forces i. e, that the bomber is willing to die for his cause and a message of desperate recklessness to third parties i. e, that the bomber feels the justice of the cause so strongly that he would rather die than submit and that he is giving little thought to the danger. When used against civilian targets, suicide bombing often causes fear in the target population greater than that caused by other forms of terrorism, as the fact that the bomber intends to die makes deterrence almost impossible. The policy of asymmetric warfare views suicide bombing on terms of imbalance of power. Groups with little significant power resort to suicide bombing as a response to actions or policies of a group with great power.

Suicide bombing is overwhelmingly used by guerrilla, unlawful enemy combatants and other irregular fighting forces. Among many such groups there are religious overtones: bombers and their supporters may believe that their sacrifice will be rewarded in a afterlife. Suicide bombers often believe, correctly or incorrectly, that their actions are in accordance with moral or social standards because they are aimed at fighting unjust acts. Self sacrifice has always been a concept of war.

The act of deliberately destroying oneself to inflict harm on an enemy is more restricted to modern times and the era of explosives. The ritual act of self-sacrifice during combat appeared in a large scale at the end of World War II with the Japanese kamikaze bombers. In these attacks, airplanes were used as flying bombs. Later in the war, as Japan became more desperate, this act became formalized, ritualized and planes were outfitted with explosives specific to the task of suicide mission. Kamikaze strikes were a weapon of symmetric war used by the Empire of Japan against United States Navy aircraft carriers. The Japanese also sent two-man midget submarines, essentially manned tedoesorp, on suicide missions.

After aiming the submarines at their target, the two crew members were to embrace and shoot eachother in the head. Guerrilla groups that have employed suicide bombing include Kurdistan Workers Party and the Tamil Tigers who have committed 75 suicide bombings since 1980. Suicide has been a particularly popular tactic amongst some Palestinian guerrilla groups including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Bombers affiliated with these groups often use so called "suicide-belts", explosive devices designed to be strapped to the body under clothing.

The manufacture and shipping of these devices is generally considered a form of support of terrorism. Te term "suicide bombing" became commonplace after the attack on United States Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983. The assassination of the master Palestinian bomb maker Yahya Ay yash, presumably by Israeli agents, in January of 1996, set off a series of suicide bombings in retaliation. Suicide bombings nonetheless remained relatively unusual until a few years ago, after the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat walked out of the peace conference at Camp David, a conference at which Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, had offered to return to the Palestinians parts of Jerusalem and almost all of the West Bank. The September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack used large fully-fueled planes as enormous cruise missiles flown into World Trade Centre Towers, killing the planes' hijackers and causing over 2,500 casualties in the process, making it the most destructive suicide bombing in history. It also had vast economic and political impact: for a cost of 20 attackers' lives and apparently under US$100,000, global markets registered a trillion-dollar drop within a week and huge new expenditures for military and surveillance technology were "justified".

After the U.S. occupied Iraq in 2003, a small wave of suicide bombings occurred. The suicide bombers target mainly United States military targets although civilian targets such as Shiite mosques and international offices of the UN and the Red Cross were also attacked. As seen through history, suicide bombing is a newly adopted tact of warfare. Nations have been fighting for their rights throughout history but this form of retaliation was never observed before.

The question which arrives here is that why has suicide bombing become the only option left for getting ones rights and why it is practiced by Palestinian Arabs and Muslims in particular? This indictment of Palestinian Arabs and Muslims is built cleverly by media but it is the kind of cleverness that substitutes for facts and logic. Palestinian men, women and children have waged over the years against Israeli terror, massacres, executions, expropriations, deportations, house demolitions, sieges, curfews and myriads new forms of bullying and humiliation. This long, hard, constant, unflagging and valiant struggle over more than 50 years is equated with the acts of "suicide bombers". After Yasir Arafat walked out of the peace conference, many Palestinians concluded that they will not see peace soon but when it eventually comes they will get everything they want.

They will fight. They will endure and they will suffer for that final victory. From then on the struggle was no longer about negotiation and compromise, about who would get which piece of land, which road or river. The red passions of the bombers obliterated the grays of the peace process. Suicide bombing became the tactic of choice even in circumstances where a bomber could have planted a bomb and then escaped without injury".

Suicide bombing became not just a means but an End" While Americans ponder the roots of murderous martyrdom, searching for explanations that fit within their notions of Third World psychology and religion, the Palestinians seem less interested in spiritual inspiration than in practical military innovation. But this is also a fact that Palestinians have adopted suicide bombing as a strategic choice, not out of desperation. There are a lot of people in the world who are desperate, yet they have not gone around strapping dynamite to themselves. They do this out of a perversity, because they actually want to win their independence in blood and fire and this has led them to adopt suicide bombing as a strategic choice. While the first suicide bombings against Israeli occupation began in 1993, the Palestinians have been going through "blood and fire" since atleast the 1930's.

What this means is that Palestinians are now engaged in a most dangerous innovation in the strategy of liberation. But the operations themselves are very carefully calculated maneuvers. Islamist and other groups launch suicide attacks because they are seen as effective means to demoralize Israel. The "martyrdom operations" are deemed the only answer to the vastly superior military capabilities of the Israeli army. In the words of the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, "Once we have warplanes and missiles, then we can think of changing our means of legitimate self-defense. But right now, we can only tackle the fire with our bare hands and sacrifice ourselves".

Advocates have described the attacks as the most important "strategic weapon" of Palestinian resistance. And while religious justification of such attacks is important for many Muslims, secular groups related to Fatah such as the Tanz im and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade have resorted to similar tactics". A big test is taking place of whether suicide bombing can succeed as a strategy of liberation" But what brings a young man to detonate himself amidst a crowd of teenagers? Is it a religious upbringing with promises of paradise in reward for acts of martyrdom? Is it the parental support he receives for his convictions?

Is t brainwashing or rather encouragement from his society with no other means of fighting back against oppression and humiliation? The answer is that all these factors combine to bring a person to perform such an act. Often a bomber believes that a close friend or a member of his family has been killed by Israeli troops and this is part of his motivation. The crucial factor affecting the behaviour of suicide bombers is loyalty to the group. Suicide bombers go through indoctrination processes similar to the ones that were used by the leaders of the Jim Jones and Solar Temple cults.

The bombers are organized into small cells and given countless hours of intense and intimate spiritual training, they are instructed in the details of Jihad, reminded of the need for revenge and reassured about the rewards they can expect in the afterlife. They are told that their families will be guranteed a place with God and that there are also considerable rewards for their families in this life, including cash bonuses of several thousand dollars donated by the government of Iraq, some individuals Saudis and various groups sympathetic to the cause. Finally the bombers are told that paradise lies just on the other side of the detonator, that death will feel nothing like more than a pinch. Nasr a Hassan, a Pakistani journalist interviewed almost 250 people from 1996 to 1999, who were either training bombers or preparing to go on a suicide mission themselves. She says that none of the suicide bombers, ranging from the age of 18 to 38, conformed to the typical profile of the suicidal personality, none of them were uneducated, desperately poor, simple-minded or depressed. The Palestinian bombers tend to be devout but religious fanaticism does not explain their motivation.

Nor does lack of opportunity because they tend to be be well educated.