'Our' suicide bombers

[Watser?]

I found this article at Tomdispatch about the way suicide attacks and suicide bombings have been part of Western culture for centuries as much as they are now considered to be part of Muslim culture.

The scholarly work on suicide bombers is large and growing. Most of these studies focus on why those other people do such terrible things, sometimes against their own compatriots but mainly against us. According to the popular view, Shiite or Tamil or Chechen suicide martyrs have a fundamentally different attitude toward life and death.

If, however, we have our own rich tradition of suicide bombers -- and our own unfortunate tendency to kill civilians in our military campaigns -- how different can these attitudes really be?

Western Jihad

In America's first war against Islam, we were the ones who introduced the use of suicide bombers. Indeed, the American seamen who perished in the incident were among the U.S. military's first missing in action.

It was September 4, 1804. The United States was at war with the Barbary pirates along the North African coast. The U.S. Navy was desperate to penetrate the enemy defenses. Commodore Edward Preble, who headed up the Third Mediterranean Squadron, chose an unusual stratagem: sending a booby-trapped U.S.S. Intrepid into the bay at Tripoli, one of the Barbary states of the Ottoman empire, to blow up as many of the enemy's ships as possible. U.S. sailors packed 10,000 pounds of gunpowder into the boat along with 150 shells.

When Lieutenant Richard Sommers, who commanded the vessel, addressed his crew on the eve of the mission, a midshipman recorded his words:

"'No man need accompany him, who had not come to the resolution to blow himself up, rather than be captured; and that such was fully his own determination!' Three cheers was the only reply. The gallant crew rose, as a single man, with the resolution yielding up their lives, sooner than surrender to their enemies: while each stepped forth, and begged as a favor, that he might be permitted to apply the match!"

The crew of the boat then guided the Intrepid into the bay at night. So as not to be captured and lose so much valuable gunpowder to the enemy, they chose to blow themselves up with the boat. The explosion didn't do much damage -- at most, one Tripolitan ship went down -- but the crew was killed just as surely as the two men who plowed a ship piled high with explosives into the U.S.S. Cole in the Gulf of Aden nearly 200 years later.

Despite the failure of the mission, Preble received much praise for his strategies. "A few brave men have been sacrificed, but they could not have fallen in a better cause," opined a British navy commander. The Pope went further: "The American commander, with a small force and in a short space of time, has done more for the cause of Christianity than the most powerful nations of Christiandom have done for ages!"

...

America did not, of course, dream up suicide missions. They form a rich vein in the Western tradition. In the Bible, Samson sacrificed himself in bringing down the temple on the Philistine leadership, killing more through his death than he did during his life. The Spartans, at Thermopylae, faced down the Persians, knowing that the doomed effort would nevertheless delay the invading army long enough to give the Athenians time to prepare Greek defenses. In the first century AD in the Roman province of Judea, Jewish Zealots and Sicarians ("dagger men") launched suicide missions, mostly against Jewish moderates, to provoke an uprising against Roman rule.

Later, suicide missions played a key role in European history. "Books written in the post-9/11 period tend to place suicide bombings only in the context of Eastern history and limit them to the exotic rebels against modernism," writes Niccolo Caldararo in an essay on suicide bombers. "A study of the late 19th century and early 20th would provide a spate of examples of suicide bombers and assassins in the heart of Europe." These included various European nationalists, Russian anarchists, and other early practitioners of terrorism.

I will add a national hero of the Netherlands here to illustrate that point, Jan van Speijk. Pretty much every town here has a Van Speijk street or lane. Yet this man's claim to fame is that during the Belgian War of Independence against the short-lived Dutch rule he blew up his own ship in the harbour of Antwerp, together with its crew, rather than surrender. Quoting Wikipedia: "In the 19th century and first half of the twentieth century, Dutch nationalists regarded Van Speijk as a hero. This quickly resulted in a royal decree (koninklijk besluit number 81, 11 February 1833) issued by King William I pronouncing that as long as the Dutch Navy will exist there will always be a ship named 'Van Speijk' to ensure his memory."

[California Tanker]

I would say that scuttling your ship is on a slightly different level to a suicide bombing, given that you didn't set sail with the intention of blowing yourself up. Further, the object of the scuttling being to deny yourself or your equipment to the enemy, not to cause harm to the enemy.

Similar with the USS Intrepid incident mentioned above. What Tom doesn't mention is the fact that the ship is estimated to have been blown up with the crew still aboard because it had been boarded by Tripoline defenders before it had reached its target location. It was still the preferred course of action that the Americans aboard manage to escape. This is different from the standard 'modern' suicide bombing in which case there is no hope of survival, and the person's death was the intent from the outset.

On a related note, see LCDR Roope's death when he rammed Admiral Hipper with his little destroyer, HMS Glowworm. 119 out of 150 were killed. He was utterly outgunned, and the ends result was inevitable. He just chose to make it happen under his circumstances.

Most any incident I can think of in the West where someone had deliberately targeted themselves at the enemy in certain death has been the result of circumstance, not intent. For example, a number of aviators in WWII would aim their fatally damaged aircraft at an enemy target, to take a 'few more with them' when they died, but unlike Kamikaze/Tokko Tai, it was not their intent to die when they started.

The concept of thinking, from planning through execution, of an action which all-but-guarantees your death is not really one that has any traction in the West.

NTM

[Adam]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

The concept of thinking, from planning through execution, of an action which all-but-guarantees your death is not really one that has any traction in the West.

*ahem*

[California Tanker]

Don't think that's entirely accurate. MAJ Kong did not take off with the intent of plummeting to his death, just circumstances ended up changing his initial plan.

NTM

[Deadlokd]

The Spartan defence was to buy time (if the movie was accurate) so Leonidas' wife could marshal the army in Sparta. They may have gone knowing they probably wouldn't come back but that's worlds away from blowing up a bus full of women and children.

Military personnel are legitimate targets in time of war, civillians aren't. That's called terrorism.

[Watser?]

You'd think that, wouldn't you?

Yet the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut is almost universally considered terrorism. The attacks by US, NATO or Israeli airforces on civilian targets may be called war crimes by some, it is not called terrorism by anyone.

Terrorism is not a word used to describe facts, it is used to smear.

[Deadlokd]

I use terrorism in it's intended sense. An act designed to terrorise a population. Suicide bombing is terrorism. The attack on the Marine Barracks was not. Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians is terrorism. Unfortunately people equate fighters without governments terrorists as though having a government lends legitimacy.

[Watser?]

Ok, but the point is just because it is a suicide bombing doesn't make it terrorism. The attack on the Marine Barracks was a suicide attack. A lot of terrorism (including car bombs but also air attacks and cluster bombing) is not suicide bombing.

Otherwise we are agreed.

[Clutch Munny]

Originally Posted by California Tanker

Don't think that's entirely accurate. MAJ Kong did not take off with the intent of plummeting to his death, just circumstances ended up changing his initial plan.

NTM

I took the point to be that pilot survivability -- whatever the official policy/rhetoric -- was a distant nth on the priorities in a nuclear bomber strike on the Soviet heartland.

But it's also possible that Adam was just fucking about.

[Clutch Munny]

Originally Posted by Watser?

You'd think that, wouldn't you?

Yet the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut is almost universally considered terrorism. The attacks by US, NATO or Israeli airforces on civilian targets may be called war crimes by some, it is not called terrorism by anyone.

Terrorism is not a word used to describe facts, it is used to smear.

My read and my recollection is that the notion of state terrorism, especially as applied to the US and its allies in the ME, was beginning to get some traction in media discourse just when 9/11 happened, destroying this burgeoning subtlety in the Two-Minute Hate that lasted 8 years and counting.

[Plant Woman]

Originally Posted by Deadlokd

Military personnel are legitimate targets in time of war, civillians aren't. That's called terrorism.

Someone forgot to tell the military who countless times went into Native American villages and slaughtered women and children.

[California Tanker]

I thought that was more a genocide? Terrorism usually relies on fear to achieve a goal. The US policy at the time was more along the lines of 'killing them is easier'

NTM

[Jug Pilot]

CT

When the Taliban goes into a village and and kills a few villagers for not upholding the Taliban beliefs, what does the US and other forces do? This is not really reported. Just curious. Do they rebuild or relocate the village?

[California Tanker]

Not usually.

We can't guarantee the safety of every individual village, just as the police can't guarantee your safety or that of your home. What we can do is try to look for patterns, figure out where the opposition are coming from, and remove them at the source. Routine protection is in the hands of the Afghan army and police.

NTM

[Adam]

Originally Posted by Clutch Munny

I took the point to be that pilot survivability -- whatever the official policy/rhetoric -- was a distant nth on the priorities in a nuclear bomber strike on the Soviet heartland.

But it's also possible that Adam was just fucking about.

I was mostly just fucking around.

I do think the usefulness of drawing a distinction between attacks where the attacker will probably not survive and attacks where the attacker will certainly not survive is questionable.

[California Tanker]

"Hope" is a very strong motivator. You might just be better than the other guy, cleverer than the other guy, or you may just simply catch a break. It is a lot easier to talk yourself into doing something which has a rational (even if unlikely) chance of survival than doing something where your death is the intent from the outset.

NTM

[Dingfod]

If I recall correctly, I'm pretty sure Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh had rigged a way to detonate his truck bomb from the cab, a wire or string or something that would set it off immediately, just in case he was caught before he could set us up the bomb. He was able to get away with parking the truck right by the federal building without being caught.