The suicide bomber's imagination leads him to believe in a brilliant act of heroism, when in fact he is simply blowing himself up pointlessly and taking other people's lives.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The weapon of suicide bombing is so desperate that you aren't even left with the possibility of taking revenge or punishing anyone; the terrorist is killed along with his victims, his blood mixing with theirs.
The only moral question with suicide bombing is who the target is. And in that sense, the suicide bomber is no different from the stealth bomber or the cruise missile. If it is targeted at civilian people, then it is morally wrong, whether done by Bush, Blair, or a suicide bomber.
The idea of suicide is of a very set narrative, as if killing yourself is a definitive statement. But it can be just as meaningless as throwing a stone in a river.
For many, embracing the ideology of Osama bin Laden or ISIS allowed them to become the heroes of their own story as well as actors in a cosmic crusade. For others, a 'cognitive opening' to militant Islam was often precipitated by a personal disappointment or loss.
A large part of the problem, is that young people are being born into the world and growing up without much hope. And so, they become murderers, they become suicide bombers.
For many terrorists, carrying out an attack allowed them to become the heroes of their own story.
They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice... that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.
Suicidal violence is not the exclusive property of the Muslim world. Suicide bombings were a tactic of nationalist struggles in 19th-century Europe and Russia, the far east during the second world war and the Vietnam war, and in modern Sri Lanka.
The suicide bombers who struck London on 7 July 2005 killed 52 innocent people and wounded hundreds more. All of them must live with their memories. And the rest of us will always remember where we were when we heard that London had been hit by the worst terrorist attack in its history.
To me our bombing policy appears to be suicidal. Not because it does not do vast damage to our enemy, it does; but because, simultaneously, it does vast damage to our peace aim, unless that aim is mutual economic and social annihilation.
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