This essay — The View from the Eye of the Storm — by Haim Harari is flying around the net and is perhaps one of the most well-reasoned pieces I’ve reads for months. Of course it turns out to be about two years old went around the net once and caught fire again recently. Nothing ever dies on the Internet! Click here and read it in it’s entirelty. Good stuff. It’s particularly interesting to see how he is ahead of the curve, still!
But the real fear comes from the undisputed fact that no defense and no preventive measures can succeed against a determined suicide murderer. This has not yet penetrated the thinking of the Western World. The U.S. and Europe are constantly improving their defense against the last murder, not the next one. We may arrange for the best airport security in the world. But if you want to murder by suicide, you do not have to board a plane in order to explode yourself and kill many people. Who could stop a suicide murder in the midst of the crowded line waiting to be checked by the airport metal detector? How about the lines to the check-in counters in a busy
travel period? Put a metal detector in front of every train station in Spain and the terrorists will get the buses. Protect the buses and they will explode in movie theaters, concert halls, supermarkets, shopping malls, schools and hospitals. Put guards in front of every concert hall and there will always be a line of people to be checked by the guards and this line will be the target, not to speak of killing the guards themselves. You can somewhat reduce your vulnerability by preventive and defensive measures and by strict border controls but not eliminate it and definitely not win the war in a defensive way. And it is a war!
What is behind the suicide murders? Money, power and cold-blooded murderous incitement, nothing else. It has nothing to do with true fanatic religious beliefs. No Moslem preacher has ever blown himself up. No son of an Arab politician or religious leader has ever blown himself. No relative of anyone influential has done it. Wouldn’t you expect some of the religious leaders to do it themselves, or to talk their sons into doing it, if this is truly a supreme act of religious fervor? Aren’t they interested in the benefits of going to Heaven? Instead, they send outcast women, naïve children, retarded people and young incited hotheads. They promise them the delights, mostly sexual, of the next world, and pay their families handsomely after the supreme act is performed and enough innocent people are dead.
Suicide murders also have nothing to do with poverty and despair. The poorest region in the world, by far, is Africa. It never happens there. There are numerous desperate people in the world, in different cultures, countries and continents. Desperation does not provide anyone with explosives, reconnaissance and transportation. There was certainly more despair in Saddam’s Iraq then in Paul Bremmer’s Iraq, and no one exploded himself. A suicide murder is simply a horrible, vicious weapon of cruel, inhuman, cynical, well-funded terrorists, with no regard to human life, including the life of their fellow countrymen, but with very high regard to their own affluent well-being and their hunger for power.
Bravo!
Doesn’t the fact that Saddam would have tortured and killed the families of the suicide bombers if they were blowing things up in Iraq, where as we would NEVER do that….and they kind of know this?
Everyone feared Saddam, and for good reason. They don’t fear us at all.
The author is correct — as far as he goes. Personally, I find suicide bombers quite reasonable and fitting in the history of warfare. There have always been suicide missions — and they were recognized more as an act of bravery founded in nationalism and patriotism.
The current crop may use [and believe] in the veneer of Islam; but, no less so than Kamikaze pilots who were blessed by Shinto priests before going into battle with enough fuel in their planes for one-way missions.
John Wayne crap or not — there were Americans who volunteered for suicide missions in WW2. There were Union and Confederate soldiers who did the same.
The differences are those of degree and quantity. And, of course, the American ideology that must identify those who hate “us” as somehow being deranged.
An interesting article. The most articulate statement of that position that I’ve seen. Assuming one agrees with his assessment of the situation in the Middle East — that is, it is a group of societies that have fallen behind the west in many ways — what can actually be done about it?
Neither the US nor Israel is all powerful. Israel’s willingness to use force certainly hasn’t solved its problem with its neighbors. The US has been unable to bring democracy out of the barrel of a gun either — witness the debacle in Iraq.
Moreover, the US has for decades been supporting nasty dictatorial regimes in the area — including Egypt and Saudi Arabia — hardly models for the rest of the Middle East to emulate. It also supported the likes of Saddam Hussein and, oh, yes, the Shah of Iran.
Does anybody remember that before the Ayatollahs, Iran had a brutal dictator whose title was “Shah”? Do you also remember how he got there? In the early nineteen fifties the US CIA engineered the overthrow of an elected Iranian government because it was about to nationalize the British Petroleum company. It replaced it with the regime of the Shah who ruled Iran with an iron fist for more than twenty years. The rapid growth of extremist Islam followed and was inspired by the success of the Islamic revolution that dumped the Shah.
The message I take from this is that the use of force in the Middle East simply hasn’t worked and never will. Israel certainly doesn’t offer a model for a successful solution. The west needs to find a more intelligent way to resolve this.
Whoops! I forgot to mention another US supported regime — Pakistan! Is that the model that Ms. Rice’s “New Middle East” will be based on?
#3 – The problem with your reasoning is that they are not bombing military targets. They are not just killing innocent civilians (including children and even their own people) but are DELIBERATLY targeting civilians. The Japanese kamikaze was not crashing his plane in to a busload of school children.
So I do agree that those that will target innocents to further a cause are deranged.
Westerners must understand that the beef is over politics. Crapy explanations like “they hate our freedom” or the suicide bombers are “retarderd” doesn’t do. At issue are many different problems, with some Western countries finding themselves entagled over some of them. I am highly suspicious of people that have been trying to find one reason behind the whole mess: poverty, religous fundamentalism, or dictatorships. Sure, the region is dysfunctional, but the US doesn’t have to help keep it that way for the sake of keeping access to cheap oil. As far as US is concerned, they want it out of the region. They’re pretty clear on this point. After all, I haven’t seen Bin Laden threaten Switzerland or Norway. What I’m sugesting may not bring wonders to the ME but will let Americans go about their lives, albeit driving normal sized cars.
#7. Ari, “they hate our freedom” is just Dubya’s sound bite. “They think we are responsible for all their woes” doesn’t get you any applause. And it opens up all kind of uncomfortable questions about US support for corrupt tyrannies in Saudi, Egypt, Pakistan, etc.
Some years ago there was a sect in Japan that tried to gas civilians in a subway in Japan. Fanaticism is not only limited to the Middle East and kamikaze pilots during WWII.
Interesting to read him talking about issues in 2004, that I have only recently been spouting here… [in complete ignorance of his speech]
But if you want to murder by suicide, you do not have to board a plane in order to explode yourself and kill many people.
I’ve commented on “bombing the bottleneck”, and how we are lucky the recent “plot” involves one-upmanship over the 9/11 attacks.
The U.S. and Europe are constantly improving their defense against the last murder, not the next one.
First box cutters, then shoe bombs, and now liquid/gel explosives & electronic devices…
Which the continued search for – after the known plot has been uncovered – merely points-up how clueless we are as to how many other people might try this – now that “the cat is out of the bag” [since the late 90’s?].
Desperation does not provide anyone with explosives, reconnaissance and transportation.
Reminds me of fire prevention brochures describing the “fire triangle” of fuel, heat, air… remove one side of the triangle, and the other two cannot support combustion.
Finally, we find the third circle of so-called religious, educational and welfare organizations, which actually do some good, feed the hungry and provide some schooling, but brainwash a new generation with hatred, lies and ignorance. This circle operates mostly through mosques, madrasas and other religious establishments but also through inciting electronic and printed media. It is this circle that makes sure that women remain inferior, that democracy is unthinkable and that exposure to the outside world is minimal. It is also that circle that leads the way in blaming everybody outside the Moslem world, for the miseries of the region.
We seem to have a handle on how to deal with the two inner circles he mentions – but we have yet to figure out how to “crack” this 3rd circle.
Hamas & Hezbollah are the two most glaring examples of this military wing / political wing crap. The IRA also comes to mind.
#6, prophet, I disagree, they ARE bombing “military” targets.
Almost every modern war has had elements of trying to demoralize the civilian population. The theory being that the country will lose the will to fight if the populace is suffering. The latest example is where Israel pounded civilians with no qualms in Lebanon, simply to put pressure on the Hezbollah. In Palestine, Israel again targeted civilians economically to put pressure on Arafat and the various political / military factions. When NATO put pressure on Yugoslavia, it aimed at both civilian and military facilities. During the Bosnia civil war, the Serbs and Croats both targeted Muslim civilians in order to demoralize and defeat them.
So why are suicide bombers treated differently then what other countries are doing? Because the US, and Israel are near invincible with all their high tech weaponry. Yet they can’t defeat the will of the people who fight back with among the most primitive of weapons. We watch the western media which will prominently display the carnage of a suicide bomber in Tel Aviv but not the helicopter attacks or long range artillery that killed multiple times the number of civilians.
The strategic goal is to bomb them into submission then send in the troops to mop up. Of course, this strategy hasn’t worked very well in any war. It only serves to unite and strengthen the people under attack.
Dying for a cause is often a noble thing. Deliberately dying is just stupid.