The Cult of the Suicide Bomber
Khaled looked at me with a broad smile. He was almost laughing. At one point, when I told him that he should abandon all thoughts of being a suicide bomber - that he could influence more people in this world by becoming a journalist - he put his head back and shot me a grin, world-weary for a man in his teens. “You have your mission,” he said. “And I have mine.” His sisters looked at him in awe. He was their hero, their amanuensis and their teacher, their representative and their soon-to-be-martyred brother. Yes, he was handsome, young - just 18 - he was dressed in a black Giorgio Armani T-shirt, a small, carefully trimmed Spanish conquistador’s beard, gelled hair. And he was ready to immolate himself.
A sinister surprise. I had travelled to Khaled’s home to speak to his mother. I had already written about his brother Hassan and wanted to introduce a Canadian journalist colleague, Nelofer Pazira, to the family. When Khaled walked on to the porch of the house, Nelofer and I both realised - at the same moment - that he was next, the next to die, the next “martyr”. It was his smile. I’ve come across these young men before, but never one who so obviously declared his calling.
His family sat around us on the porch of their home above the Lebanese city of Sidon, the sitting room adorned with coloured photographs of Hassan, already gone to the paradise - so they assured me - for which Khaled clearly thought he was destined. Hassan had driven his explosives-laden car into an American military convoy at Tal Afar in north-western Iraq, his body (or what was left of it) buried “in situ” - or so his mother was informed.
It’s easy to find the families of the newly dead in Lebanon. Their names are read from the minarets of Sidon’s mosques (most are Palestinian) and in Tripoli, in northern Lebanon, the Sunni “Tawhid” movement boasts “hundreds” of suiciders among its supporters. Every night, the population of Lebanon watches the brutal war in Iraq on television. “It’s difficult to reach ‘Palestine’ these days,” Khaled’s uncle informed me. “Iraq is easier.”
Too true. No one doubts that the road to Baghdad - or Tal Afar or Fallujah or Mosul - lies through Syria, and that the movement of suicide bombers from the Mediterranean coasts to the deserts of Iraq is a planned if not particularly sophisticated affair. What is astonishing - what is not mentioned by the Americans or the Iraqi “government” or the British authorities or indeed by many journalists - is the sheer scale of the suicide campaign, the vast numbers of young men (only occasionally women), who wilfully destroy themselves amid the American convoys, outside the Iraqi police stations, in markets and around mosques and in shopping streets and on lonely roads beside remote checkpoints across the huge cities and vast deserts of Iraq. Never have the true figures for this astonishing and unprecedented campaign of self-liquidation been calculated.
But a month-long investigation by The Independent, culling four Arabic-language newspapers, official Iraqi statistics, two Beirut news agencies and Western reports, shows that an incredible 1,121 Muslim suicide bombers have blown themselves up in Iraq. This is a very conservative figure and - given the propensity of the authorities (and of journalists) to report only those suicide bombings that kill dozens of people - the true estimate may be double this number. On several days, six - even nine - suicide bombers have exploded themselves in Iraq in a display of almost Wal-Mart availability. If life in Iraq is cheap, death is cheaper.
This is perhaps the most frightening and ghoulish legacy of George Bush’s invasion of Iraq five years ago. Suicide bombers in Iraq have killed at least 13,000 men, women and children - our most conservative estimate gives a total figure of 13,132 - and wounded a minimum of 16,112 people. If we include the dead and wounded in the mass stampede at the Baghdad Tigris river bridge in the summer of 2005 - caused by fear of suicide bombers - the figures rise to 14,132 and 16,612 respectively. Again, it must be emphasised that these statistics are minimums. For 529 of the suicide bombings in Iraq, no figures for wounded are available. Where wounded have been listed in news reports as “several”, we have made no addition to the figures. And the number of critically injured who later died remains unknown. Set against a possible death toll of half a million Iraqis since the March 2003 invasion, the suicide bombers’ victims may appear insignificant; but the killers’ ability to terrorise civilians, militiamen and Western troops and mercenaries is incalculable.
Never before has the Arab world witnessed a phenomenon of suicide-death on this scale. During Israel’s occupation of Lebanon after 1982, one Hizbollah suicide-bombing a month was considered remarkable. During the Palestinian intifadas of the 1980s and 1990s, four per month was regarded as unprecedented. But suicide bombers in Iraq have been attacking at the average rate of two every three days since the 2003 Anglo-American invasion.
And, although neither the Iraqi government nor their American mentors will admit this, scarcely 10 out of more than a thousand suicide killers have been identified. We know from their families that Palestinians, Saudis, Syrians and Algerians have been among the bombers. In a few cases, we have names. But in most attacks, the authorities in Iraq - if they can still be called “authorities” after five years of catastrophe - have no idea to whom the bloodied limbs and headless torsos of the bombers belong.
Even more profoundly disturbing is that the “cult” of the suicide bomber has seeped across national frontiers. Within a year of the Iraqi invasion, Afghan Taliban bombers were blowing themselves up alongside Western troops or bases in Helmand province and in the capital Kabul. The practice leached into Pakistan, striking down thousands of troops and civilians, killing even the principal opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto. The London Tube and bus bombings - despite the denials of Tony Blair - were obviously deeply influenced by events in Iraq.
Academics and politicians have long debated the motives of the bombers, the psychological make-up of the men and women who cold-bloodedly decide to undertake the role of suicide executioners; for they are executioners, killers who see their victims - be they soldiers or civilians - before they flick the switch that destroys them. The Israelis long ago decided that there was no “perfect” profile for a suicide bomber, and my own experience in Lebanon bears this out. The suicider might have spent years fighting the Israelis in the south of the country. Often, they would have been imprisoned or tortured by Israel or its proxy Lebanese militia. Sometimes, brothers or other family members would have been killed. On other occasions, the example of their own relatives would have drawn them into the vortex of suicide-by-example.
Khaled is - or was, for I no longer know if he is alive, since I met him a few weeks ago- influenced by his brother Hassan, whose journey to Iraq was organised by an unknown group, presumably Palestinian, and whose weapons training beside the Tigris river was videotaped by his comrades. Hassan’s mother has shown me this tape - which ends with Hassan cheerfully waving goodbye from the driver’s window of a battered car, presumably the vehicle he was about to ram into the American convoy at Tal Afar.
None of this addresses the issue of religious belief. While there is evidence aplenty that the Japanese suicide pilots of the Second World War were sometimes coerced and intimidated into their final flights against US warships in the Pacific, many also believed that they were dying for their emperor. For them, the fall of cherry blossom and the divine wind - the “kamikaze” - blessed their souls as they aimed their bombers at American aircraft carriers. But even an industrialised dictatorship like Japan - facing the imminent collapse of its entire society at the hands of a superpower - could only mobilise 4,615 “kamikazes”. The Iraq suicide bombers may already have reached half that number.
But the Japanese authorities encouraged their pilots to think of themselves as a collective suicide unit whose insignia of imminent death - white Rising Sun headbands and white scarves - prefigured the yellow headbands imprinted with Koranic script that Hizbollah guerrillas wore when they set out to attack Israeli soldiers in the occupied zone of southern Lebanon. In Iraq, however, those who direct the growing army of suiciders do not lack inventiveness. Their bombers have arrived at the scene of their self-destruction dressed as car mechanics, soldiers, police officers, middle-aged housewives, children’s sweet-sellers, worshippers and - on one occasion - a “harmless” shepherd. They have carried their bombs in Oldsmobiles, fuel trucks, garbage trucks, flat-bed trucks, on donkeys and bicycles, motor-bikes and mopeds and carts, minibuses, date-vendors’ vans, mobile recruitment centres and lorries packed with chlorine. Incredibly, there appears to be no individual central “brain” behind the bombings - although “groupuscules” of bombers obviously exist. Inspiration, imitation and the globalised influence of the internet appear sufficient to empower the bombers of Iraq.
On an individual level, it is possible to see the friction and psychological trauma of families. Khaled’s mother, for instance, constantly expressed her pride in her dead son Hassan and, in front of me, she looked with almost equal love at his still-living brother. But when my companion urged Khaled to remain alive for his mother’s sake - reminding him that the Prophet himself spoke of the primary obligation of a Muslim man to protect his mother - the woman was close to tears. She was torn apart by her love as a mother and her religious-political duty as the woman who had brought another would-be martyr into the world. When my friend again urged Khaled to remain alive, to stay in Sidon and marry - eerily, the muezzin’s call to prayer had begun during our conversation - he shook his head.
Not even a disparaging remark about those who would send him on his death mission - that they were prepared to live in this world while sending others like Khaled to their fate - could discourage him. “I am not going to become a ’shahed’ [martyr] for people,” he replied. “I am doing it for God.”
It was the same old argument. We could produce a hundred good ways - peaceful ways - for him to resolve the injustices of this world; but the moment Khaled invoked the name of God, our suggestions became irrelevant. Rationality - humanism, if you like - simply withered away. If a Western president could invoke a war of “good against evil”, his antagonists could do the same.
But is there a rational pattern to the suicide bombings in Iraq? The first incidents of their kind took place as American troops were actually advancing towards Baghdad. Near the Shia town of Nasiriyah, an off-duty Iraqi policeman, Sergeant Ali Jaffar Moussa Hamadi al-Nomani, drove a car bomb into an American Marine roadblock. Married, with five children, he had been a soldier in Iraq’s 1980-88 war with Iran and had volunteered to fight the Americans after Saddam’s occupation of Kuwait. Shortly afterwards, two Shia Muslim women did the same.
In its dying days, even Saddam Hussein’s own government was shocked. “The US administration is going to turn the whole world into people prepared to die for their nations,” Saddam’s vice-president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, warned. “All they can do now is turn themselves into bombs. If the B-52 bombs can now kill 500 or more in our war, then I’m sure that some operations by our freedom fighters will be able to kill 5,000.” Ramadan even referred to “the martyr’s moment of sublimity” - an al-Qa’ida-like phrase that ill befitted a secular Baathist - and it was clear that the vice-president was almost as surprised as the Americans. But only two days after the US occupation of Baghdad, a woman killed herself while trying to explode a grenade among a group of American troops outside the capital.
Throughout the five years of war, suicide bombers have focused on Iraq’s own American-trained security forces rather than US troops. At least 365 attacks have been staged against Iraqi police or paramilitary forces. Their targets included at least 147 police stations (1,577 deaths), 43 army and police recruitment centres (939 deaths), 91 checkpoints (with a minimum of 564 fatalities), 92 security patrols (465 deaths) and numerous other police targets (escorts, convoys accompanying government ministers, etc). One of the recruitment centres - in the centre of Baghdad - was assaulted by suicide bombers on eight separate occasions.
By contrast, suicide bombers have attacked only 24 US bases at a cost of 100 American dead and 15 Iraqis, and 43 American patrols and checkpoints, during which 116 US personnel were killed along with at least 56 civilians, 15 of whom appear to have been shot by American soldiers in response to the attacks, and another 26 of whom were children standing next to a US patrol. Most of the Americans were killed west or north of Baghdad. Suicide attacks on the police concentrated on Baghdad and Mosul and the Sunni towns to the immediate north and south of Baghdad.
The trajectory of the suicide bombers shows a clear preference for military targets throughout the insurgency, with attacks on Americans gradually decreasing from 2006 and individual attacks on Iraqi police patrols and police recruits increasing over the past two years, especially in the 100 miles north of Baghdad. Just as the Islamist murderers of Algeria - and their military opponents - favoured the fasting month of Ramadan for their bloodiest assaults in the 1990s, so the suicide bombers of Iraq mobilise on the eve of religious festivals. There was a pronounced drop in suicide assaults during the period of sectarian liquidations after 2005, either because the bombers feared interception by the throat-cutters of tribal gangs working their way across Baghdad, or because - a grim possibility - they were themselves being used in the sectarian murder campaign.
The most politically powerful attacks occurred inside military bases - including the Green Zone in Baghdad (two in one day in October 2004) - and against the UN headquarters (in which the UN envoy Sergio de Mello was killed) and the International Red Cross offices in Baghdad in 2003. By December 2003, British officials were warning that there were more “spectacular” suicide bombings to come, and the first suicide assault on a mosque took place in January of the following year when a bomber on a bicycle blew himself up in a Shia mosque in Baquba, killing four worshippers and wounding another 39.
Scarcely a year later, another suicider attacked a second Shia mosque, killing 14 worshippers and wounding 40. In February 2004, a man blew himself up on a bus outside the Shia mosque at Khadamiyah in Baghdad, killing 17 more Shia Muslims. Only a few days earlier, a man wearing an explosives belt killed four at yet another Shia mosque in the Doura district of Baghdad. The suicide campaign against Shia places of worship continued with an attack on a Mosul mosque in March 2005, killing at least 50, two more attacks in April that killed 26, and another in May in Baghdad.
While Shia mosques were being targeted in a deliberate campaign of provocation by al-Qa’ida-type suiciders, markets and hospitals frequented by Shia Muslims were also attacked. Almost all the 600 Iraqis killed by suicide bombs in May 2005 were Shias. After the partial demolition of the Shia mosque at Samarra on 22 February 2006, the “war of the mosques” began in earnest for the suicide bombers of Iraq. A Sunni mosque was blown up, with nine dead and “dozens” of wounded, and two Shia mosques were the target of suicide bombers in the same week. In early July 2006, seven suicide killers blew themselves up in Sunni and Shia mosques, leaving a total of 51 civilians dead. During the same period, a suicide bomber launched the first attack of its kind on Shia pilgrims arriving from Iran.
Bombers were to attack the funerals of those Shia they had killed, and even wedding parties. Schools, university campuses and shopping precincts were also now included on the target lists, most of the victims yet again being Shia. Over the past year, however, an increasing number of tribal leaders loyal to the Americans - including Sattar Abu Risha, who publicly met President Bush on 13 September 2007, and former insurgents who have now joined the American-paid anti-al-Qa’ida militias - have been blown apart by Sunni bombers.
Only about 10 of the suicide bombers have been identified. One of them, who attacked an Iraqi police unit in June 2005, turned out to be a former police commando called Abu Mohamed al-Dulaimi, but the Americans and the Iraqi authorities appear to have little intelligence on the provenance of these killers. On at least 27 occasions, Iraqi officials have claimed to know the identity of the killers - saying that they had recovered passports and identity papers that proved their “foreign” origin - but they have never produced these documents for public inspection. There is even doubt that the two suicide bombers who blew themselves up in a bird market earlier this year were in fact mentally retarded young women, as the government was to allege.
Indeed, nothing could better illustrate the lack of knowledge of the authorities than the two contradictory statements made by the Americans and their Iraqi protégés in March of last year. Just as David Satterfield, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s adviser on Iraq, was claiming that “90 per cent” of suicide bombers were crossing the border from Syria, Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, was announcing that “most” of the suiciders came from Saudi Arabia - which shares a long, common border with Iraq. Saudis would hardly waste their time travelling to Damascus to cross a border that their own country shared with Iraq. Many in Baghdad, including some government ministers, believe that the nationality of the bombers is much closer to home - that they are, in fact, Iraqis.
It will be many years before we have a clearer idea of the number of bombers who have killed themselves in the Iraq war - and of their origin. Long before The Independent’s total figure reached 500, al-Qa’ida’s Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was boasting of “800 martyrs” among his supporters. And since al-Zarqawi’s death brought not the slightest reduction in bombings, we must assume that there are many other “manipulators” in charge of Iraq’s suicide squads.
Nor can we assume the motives for every mass murder. Who now remembers that the greatest individual number of victims of any suicide bombing died in two remote villages of the Kahtaniya region of Iraq, all Yazidis - 516 of them slaughtered, another 525 wounded. A Yazidi girl, it seems, had fallen in love with a Sunni man and had been punished by her own people for this “honour crime”: she had been stoned to death. The killers presumably came from the Sunni community.
One of George Bush’s most insidious legacies in Iraq thus remains its most mysterious; the marriage of nationalism and spiritual ferocity, the birth of an unprecedentedly huge army of Muslims inspired by the idea of death.
–Robert Fisk
©independent.co.uk
Must watch movie: “Rendition”
“…a mysterious marriage of nationalism and spiritual ferocity…”
…defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; …show them no mercy. (Deuteronomy 7:1-6)
Perhaps the real problem lies with those who wrote Bush’s play Book. The ‘defeated’ have obviously read it.
¿ Perhaps geo creatively deserves the “honor” of the suicide bombers being re-entitled:
Namaste
… … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … & … ML King … … Inspiration … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed »
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — MLK
There is a larger suicide cult in the United States. About 16,000 people per year shoot themselves to death. We live in a nation where 200 million private arms are held by about a quarter of our population.
Before we get overly-fascinated with the cult of the “other,” that Fisk, as always, describes so well and in such great detail, we should ponder those numbers just a bit. They are very much part of the same death cult that drives the “other” over the brink.
riverman101 - you make a darned compelling case. Too bad the public, my fellow Americans, are too busy watching basketball to give a damn.
What else can we expect when we drive millions of people to the point where they no longer have anything to live for and become determined to go down fighting?
Must watch movie: “Rendition”
You co do worse than to watch “The Battle of Algiers” as well.
…an incredible 1,121 Muslim suicide bombers have blown themselves up in Iraq… the true estimate may be double this number.
If that number is correct, and with 4,000 heavily armed and protected US soldiers having been killed (not all by suicide bombers), then the suicide cult is remarkably effective and efficient.
Once again Robert Fisk is able to put a human face on an inhuman condition. This is what he does so well. He helps us to see and understand far beyond the politics and economics which are usually offered as news of the war. Historians will get a much better picture of the times from his writing than from the corporate media.
Hoa binh
let me see: Muslims who are dying for God are blowing up Muslim places of worship. sounds very thin to me, along with much more of this article. could it be that this piece comes from the same hole as articles about the “religious war” in Ireland?
The Iraqi and Afghanistan Freedom Fighters show that when you’re in a fight but you know you’re absolutely right, then the little guy beats the big guy every time.
The USA created the chaos and death in the Middle East because of it’s despicable and two-faced policies. That Arabs have shamed the beast of the USA is exactly what the US deserves.
kloro-
You must understand that not all muslims are the same. There are Sunni and Shi’a and they have different beliefs. (Yes it’s the same as the Christian-Catholic issue in Belfast). They will attack each other and their places of worship. They do not believe the other is right.
Americans have little or no understanding of Muslim philosophy. America is the aggressor, America represents a threat to their way of life, they do not want Wal-Marts, Big-K Superstores, or porn shops opening up in their holy cities. As soon as America moves in their life will evaporate. McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, etc. will pop up everywhere. Traditional muslims are desperate to stop this. They do not fear death, nor look upon it like we do. Their fear of losing their values is far greater. If they die resisting us, they achieve honor in the afterlife.
Most Americans don’t care. The pig-ignorant Christians stare down their noses at the Muslims and say “Why don’t they love Jesus? They need to learn American values.” If Americans had any respect at all for Muslims as a whole, there would be no conflict at all. The same goes for Israelis. If you go to a Muslim holy area and show a little respect to them, you’ll discover that it’s one of the most peaceful and beautiful places you could ever know. You’ll also discover thet they are alot more open, honest, and courteous than Christians.
Nikon is right. This is especially what happens when you get involved in war for political purposes. As we have been since WW2. Our government and their policies are making us targets in their bullshit war on terror.
Hoa binh
Suicide bombers are the inevitable consequence of war between the “Haves” and the “Have-nots”.
It’s even worse when your opponents come from a culture of poverty, where male “honor” becomes a bitter substitute for independence and self-sufficiency.
If we could defeat them in an evenly matched fight, using the same kind of weapons they use. We might convince them that we won fairly and earned the right to choose their rulers for them.
But that train has left the station.
The more aircraft, the more armor, and the more mechanized firepower we employ, the more despicable we are in the eyes of the insurgents. We can kill thousands, but we will never convince the survivors that they have been defeated.
Does John McCain have any clue about any of this?
A serious young fellow applied for a position with al-queda. The early interviews went well, but unfortunately, by the time his resume got to bin Laden his references could no longer be contacted. They had all blown themselves up!
Yes it’s the same as the Christian-Catholic issue in Belfast…
I believe you mean “Protestant-Catholic” issue in Belfast. Catholics are christians - the original ones. Protestantism is a sect of Christianity that was largely invented because Catholic prohibitions against usery and for chartable works (just like Islam), got in the way of the advancement of Capitalism. All a Protestsnt needs is “Faith” whatever that is, and they can then pursue their greed.
So, the Catholics (and Orthodox too) became the poor underclass, working in the mills, and Protestsnt WASPs, their consciences clear by the requirement that only “faith”, not action matters, became the capitalist masters. Some of this is still visible today in my home town.
There is something terrifying about Fisk’s essay here — it may become something of a classic. It captures something of the utter helplessness and futility which leads to the madness.
It’s not a Muslim anomaly alone. As Fisk points out, the Japanese had this, albeit state sponsored, in the kamakazies. Some of the most spectacular attacks, taking out heads of state have been Tamil and even Sikh. In America, we don’t have, as far as I know sucide bombers, but we have recurring instances of sucicide murderers who shoot and shoot until the police take them out or they use the last bullets on themselves.
In a sense, the American suiciders are even more scary — there isn’t “even” a political or religious motivation.
I suspect that it is a manifestation of something in the general cultural mood, an awareness in the public mind of coming catastrophe — just as Jung saw the horrors of WWII presaged in the dreams of his clients.
The myth I hear from the rightwing is that we can kill so many people for so many years that we can stop this. They literally talk of wiping out generations as their solution. When you hear this and then hear the talk of a 50-yr or 100-yr war, it chills the soul.
Because its a myth that you can kill everyone. Not only is it a morally obscene strategy … the willfull murder of thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, but its also certain not to work.
Newton said ‘every action creates an opposite and equal reaction’. He was speaking of physics and the movements of objects. But its equally true of politics. One of the good things about Mr. Fisk’s writing is the little details that let you realize this.
In this case, we didn’t kill anyone directly related to Khalid. I tend to think of suicide bombers being created by the death or torture of people dear to the bomber. And I’m sure that happens. But in this case it didn’t. This is more hero-worship of his older brother … which is of course another powerful human emotion.
Also, the detail of how everyone in Lebanon, everyone in the Middle East for that matter, gets to see the Iraq War in grisly detail. We tend to forget that in the US with our censored and sanitized news. This is of course just one of the reasons why the right-wing calls for deliberate genocide to wipe out the ‘Islamofascists’ is not going to work. Instead, we’d see Newton’s law applied to politics, and that action would create its own equal and opposite reaction.
Terror works that way. Terror, and what the rightwing is doing in Iraq and what it proposes is certainly terror in that its the deliberate use of force and firepower in an evil way to intimidate people into submission, can not be done in complete secrecy. If you want terror to terrorize people into submission, they have to know exactly what you’ve done.
But, while that might terrorize some, it has the opposite effect on others. Some people will hear the news of what we are doing, just like the Lebanese hear the news from Iraq, and they’ll decide its their duty, their mission to strike back. And if suicide bombing is the way to strike back, that’s what they’ll do.
We’ve killed a million or so people in Iraq during the war. We killed another million or so during the Clinton years via sanctions. Did that terrorize the Iraqis into submission? Did it terrorize the Arab world into submission? No, instead we see the numbers Mr. Fisk cites on the increase in suicide bombers. Newton’s law at work. The more we kill, the more suicide bombers we’ll face.
The answer is not violence. The idea that violence will solve the problem is a myth. Violence only leads to more violence.
PS … note, in the above Obama and Hillary the same as McCain.
The plans of the Democrats only call for ‘redeployment’ within the region. The ‘goals’ of our actions remain the same. And what this really means is an increase in murder by airpower as opposed to murder by our troops. And the murder by airpower that is the Democrats strategy is likely to cause even more of an increase in suicide bombers. That’s because the people being bombed will feel helpless to act against the planes high in the sky that are killing them and thier neighbors. So they’ll still find a way to strike back.
The Democrats only claim to be able to manage the Evil Empire better than the Republicans are doing. But its the very fact of the US running around acting as the Evil Empire that’s creating the suicide bombers (how many suicide bombers attack Sweden?). The Democrats offer zero hope for that to change.
In WWII, there were suicide attacks by Americans. The one difference to the Kamikazis is that they usually were not people recruited and then executing a plan to do it. Instead it was usually more a reaction to a situation. Someone either deciding that their situation was hopeless, and therefore to take out as many of the enemy as possible on the way out. Or someone realizing that an enemy position just needed to be taken out, and then they sacrifice themselves to do it. But there were Americans who launched ’suicide’ attacks. Of course, we hear about them as acts of incredible bravery and as ‘post-humanous’ recipients of the Medal of Armor.
The line about the ‘Christian-Catholic’ conflict seems an almost Freudian slip of the tongue that is very revealing.
In all of these conflicts, whether Protestant-Catholic amongst the Christians or Shia-Sunni amongst the Muslims, each side regards itself as the ‘true __________s’, where you can fill in the blanks as ‘true Christians’ or ‘true Muslims’.
You hear this coming out of Iraq. Since the Koran forbids the killing of other Muslims, these fanatics declare to their followers that the people on the other side are not really Muslims … and thus now people who can be killed without violating the words of the prophet.
kloro, you seem to be clueless about the complexity of the relationships between Sunnis and Shiites, and within each, the various sects. Their most important relationships are tribal, and they use intermarriage to cement these. In this regard, national borders don’t mean much, having been imposed on the populations by Western countries. Bush went in not knowing - or caring about the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. But cheer up, you’re not alone, most Americans are also clueless. We have unleashed a whirlwind, and there is no way we can contain it.
Americans think the “surge” is working, they are so wrong. Sunnis are being paid by the US to fight Al Quaida instead of Shiites, which is fine with them, but the respite is temporary.
kathyodat
COMarc — your words remind me that these psychopaths in charge, are not only brain-damaged, but of relatively lower intelligence than the average American.
have taken up residence
in their castles in the sky
Namaste
ONe commentator said Americans have little understanding of Muslim culture. Americans have little understanding of anything. The person who said Americans were too busy watching basketball to understand any serious thing probably over estimated the intelligence of Americans. The basketball watching American is probably going to be seen as intellectual as opposed to the millions watching a rather pathetic whore’s web site–the increasing junk yard of the internet that already ahs been so corrupted that it will become totally useless within five years.
Tales like these should be the front and center of any attempt to chronicle the Dubyuh legacy. They speak directly, in dog whistle fashion, to the millions of Amer’kins who voted for Dubyuh b/c he is “A good Christian Man” and they really, really wanted to have a beer with him.
Their god may officially “forgive” them- whatever that means, but I will not.
“This is especially what happens when you get involved in war for political purposes. As we have been since WW2.”
Pardon…you surely meant “…since ancient-Ur” — right?
As for this country, all wars since we lost the first-two (the so-called ‘Revolutionary’-one, and that mess in 1812) have been “political”. Even our ‘Indian-Wars’ were all “political”. [As most-are…]
War, on such a scale, is a remarkably ‘unnatural-occurrence’, and ergo are normally politically/economically motivated by an Elite which seldom ‘fight them’ — in one manipulated fashion, or another.
They used to cull the weak, and favor the strong (as a ‘Darwinian proof of concept’). Today, they serve other ‘purposes’, less-directly — but all lead back to a similar-result, nonetheless.
Since God is supposed to be omnipotent, setting off bombs in His defense shouldn’t be necessary. God can take care of Himself. Khaled needs a better reason to blow himself up.
COMarc Said: “Because its a myth that you can kill everyone.”
That’s not true… we could easily kill EVERYONE… The imposibility is to kill everyone but the select few. Now THAT’S the trick… hence the research into race-based viruses.
Namaste: Speaking of psychopaths, have you seen this? http://www.serendipity.li/bush/beyond_insanity.htm
COMark in one of many post said, regarding Amreican soldiers in WW2 “Americans who launched ’suicide’ attacks. Of course, we hear about them as acts of incredible bravery and as ‘post-humanous’ recipients of the Medal of Armor” I believe this is such a n important point. I remember war comic books of the time telling such tales of “sacrifice and bravery”.
Why are Muslim suicide bombers any different than our CIA who assassinates people or uses the political hatred of others to do the dirty work for them? Think of all the “collateral damage” in the overthrow of Allende in Chile and placement of Pinochet. Think of all the “collateral damage in Nicaragua, Honduras, Columbia and Cuba.
Freedom
(“to fight today’s terrorism with an army is like trying to shoot a cloud of mosquitoes with a machine gun.”; ‘Terror in the Name of God’ Stern)
Freedom
What sort of gift is this?
Freedom
Is that ‘gifte gottes’ or a gift of god?
Freedom
The poison of the almighty?
Freedom
A ceramic dove for the pope?
Freedom
Is it our messiah mission?
Freedom
Is it our militarist vision?
Freedom
Does it come with shock and awe?
Freedom
Is it draped in a flag?
Freedom
Is it delivered in the oil patch with a storm?
Freedom
Is it a wet CEO dream?
Freedom
Is it sold to you by presstitutes?
Freedom… such a nice ring
Let it ping on that patriot heart
Freedom for the nest blessed few.
Freedom to wage war, then thank God or invoke God
And claim it’s just so we can trick our conscience
And pretend wee are not part of the great Satan
Do we need to appeal to the higher father..
Do we need to appeal to the higher father,
To wage shock and awe?
Is that rapture in disguise?
In how many lands has the eagle of freedom
Got it’s taloned hands?
The bird of prey
Steeped in phony prayer
For….
I was born in the great Satan
I was born in the great Satan
I was born in the great Satan
PERE UBU: You raise an issue I am surprised no one commented on (as yet). The desperation factor! As we sit in our relative comfort zones making comments on this site, NONE of us has probably ever known what it’s like to experience YEARS of bombs destroying the familiar infrastructure, a lack of AC or heat when the weather demands either, filthy water, and the sense your nation (and your own life) are no longer yours. The total rape of sovereignty causes desperation, and desperate people seek desperate measures. So much of our analysis comes from our more elite standpoint and there it falters.
One of the most illuminating phases of my life included spending time in Nepal at a Buddhist monastery. One lesson was to contemplate our own pending death (something few of us really think about, it’s as if we believed we could go on forever); the second, related, was to recognize the full import of IMPERMANENCE. When societies foster an appreciation of life as blessing, the recognition that blessing can stop at any time, there is an interior prompt to be kind to others. This is the cornerstone of the law of karma. In contrast, the patriarchal religions with extreme concepts of a punitive male god, go on to punish one another in relative ways, and even construct elaborate laws and legal systems based on false emulation.
IF the suicide bombers were given a different “Faith” about the after life, and a greater respect for life here and now, something closer to what the Buddhists teach (and they do NOT make war, they PRACTICE peace), then we would not see this behavior. Of course our nation’s penchant for making weapons renders it a murdering caste, and therefore we are in no position to pass any moral judgments on those who give up their lives for the same dire purpose: that based on taking others along for the premature ride.
elmysterio — Thanks, that link is quite clear
I’m really late getting in on this one, but I hope someone’s out there still up. There’s a book on the Arabs which came out in paperback maybe 40 years ago. The quote at the beginning is from some old Arabic (pre-Muslim I think) poem. It says:
“Let no one be with us proud or overbearing, for we can be more reckless and more daring.”
That’s who the Arabs are.
PJD,
correct on the religio/history question.
BeForKids
Kathyodat,
I was listening to the fellow who wrote ‘All The Shah’s Men’ (I can’t remember his name) but he said there’s an old Persion saying; “Better to live for forty years under a tyrant than to live one day under foreign occupation.”
Siouxrose,
Beautiful words written by a beautiful soul.
Peaceman: It would seem you live to fit your screen name. Thank you very much for the highly esteemed compliment! We lightworkers MUST shine more brightly as there is so much darkness to now overcome!
It is hard for me to believe that there were NO suicide bombers in Iraq before the American Invasion.
“men and women who cold-bloodedly decide to undertake the role of suicide executioners; for they are executioners, killers who see their victims - be they soldiers or civilians - before they flick the switch that destroys them.”
Is this person seriously arguing that bombing people from the air is morally better than bombing up close and personal, because you can’t see who you are doing it to?
There is nothing new or unique about people being willing to die for a cause, willing to give their own lives to take out some of the enemy. A generation ago, we in the west understood it perfectly well. But years of cowardly techno war and rambo movie heroes that barely are scratched by the havoc they wreak has made us forget that we too believed that it is a sweet and seemly thing to die for one’s country - or cause. Dulce et Decorum.
Namaste - Thinking that psychopaths are less than human, looks to me to be the same as thinking that any group is subhuman, based on one’s particular world view. This is the route to the death camps.
We would do much better to keep in mind these words of a great poet, (and Arab): “So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.” Kahlil Gibran
4thefuture — yes Kahlil and your words ring true for me (up to a point), except I didn’t mentioned “less than” (it was ≠ ).
There are many similar groups of people working in the same direction, and you’d find that my other postings clearly preclude the idea of subhuman treatment. I specifically mention not killing them, and using the new larger prison system, as there are many complicit in the actions of the war crimes.
The facts are that it is the psychopaths that treat us 94% of the population as sub-humans for “their pleasures”, and this is where the holocaust and much mass murder has been formulated.
A rabid dog is not a sub-dog, but nonetheless being so dangerous to human life it is ‘put down’. It is all about detecting and then isolating those who are criminally insane, so their evil actions can be stopped or interrupted.
Having a particular type of brain lesion is one advanced indication of these wicked individuals, and this is empirically how the distribution percentage is calculated. A physical disability, like being blind is much easier to characterize and remedy. Many mentally diseased people pass through our lives w/o detection, only to prey upon those with less defenses.
Would you rather we let these predators (who far outnumber those tracked as sexual offenders) to continue to stay hidden, and perhaps again become Prez (with unlimited power to wreck havoc)?
Their cleverest tricks are feigning feelings, to con people to do their work for them, while blending in. Most of what is different, is not perceived by laypersons, due to the usually true assumption of people being intrinsically good - we automatically fill in missing details, AS IF they were fully sharing our world view.
They have almost no association with the same reality that we have, due to there vastly warped brain activity. There are serious books looking into how this type of degenerative behavior has been present in all cultures’ archetypes, for millenniums - and similarly characterized as “vampires”. How can thousands of different cultures have created similar “myths”, if they weren’t based upon real historical “people”.
Where you squarely hit the mark, is that we ourselves have become conditioned to act and condone psychotic actions (torture, war, unlawful spying, invasion of innocent countries) - because they’ve become part of the “acceptable” American culture. At least to those who voted for geo.
What is also hidden, is that many “acting” psychopaths are freely choosing behaviors to reap the rewards of being closely associated with the ones who do have the brain lesions - in neither case I doubt there is much hope of recovery (after being detected).
The fact is also that the neocons purposely suppressed this information, and likely ensure that no Federal funding is delivered to shine a bright light on the horrors of pathocracy (govt of the insane)
Namaste
Hopelessness drives people to do otherwise unthinkable acts.
Sungoddess: Before the illegal and inhumane invasion in 2003, there was no strife between the sects let alone any suicide bombers.
sungodess, believe it. The only thing Iraqis had to fear was Saddham. Pre invasion, Iraqis and Americans walked the streets safely any time of the day or night. And the Iraqis assured the Americans they really liked them, although not Bush. They were suffering under sanctions, but we showed them what real suffering is. Something of which we ourselves have no idea. That’s our greatest shame. We are inflicting so much pain on innocent people and don’t even know what it feels like. You can excuse babies for doing that, but adults? I can only think Americans don’t even care that we are tearing children to pieces, and inflicting torture and mayhem on innocent civilians. If we cared, we wouldn’t let it happen. And now so many Americans are all enthusiastic that the “surge” is working, thinking we will “win”. They know nothing, they have no idea what is really going on over there. I suppose they still think this about bringing the Iraqis democracy, not about stealing their oil and making Halliburton rich. And, by the way, training Blackwater in urban warfare. Guess who’s next.
kathyodat
I agree with Fisk, the suicide cult is one where a suicider executes people. Innocent people, friend or foe apparently with the intent to sacrifice as many lives as possible.
What Fisk doesn’t say, I will. This form of suicide bombing of innocents is a modern heresy. A true death cult offering the deaths of other people as somehow being pleasing to God and worthy of reward. Mohammed rejected the human sacrifice of the pagans. This is a modern form of human sacrifice which invokes the deity.
That muslim religious scholars do not condemn human sacrifice offered to Allah, is why this madness has a lost soul waving to the camera. Where is the counterbalance from their own faith
to work against the blasphemy which cloaks itself in religion and claims a reward is given.
When muslim scholars condemn human sacrifice again, then someone will be able to reach a person like Kahled in time.
Offering the deaths of people as being pleasing to God is human sacrifice.
In the end is killing justified whether by assassination or suicide bombing of a leader, or mass killing to deter the enemy. Has it worked?
As usual, a very thoughtful piece from Fisk. I wonder, however, why he didn’t bring up something he’s mentioned in other articles on the subject, that is, that he’s heard more than a few stories among refugees to Lebanon from Iraq about “patsy” suicide bombers being set up by the occupation forces, sent to a location with a loaded car, and then told to call a certain number on a cell phone, thus detonating the bomb. Some of the mosque bombings would, in fact, seem potentially to fit this pattern, even if a large majority of suicide attacks are probably “sincere” in purpose. And the Samarra mosque bombing (while not a “suicide” as far as I can remember) was so sophisticated as to imply some very expert minds and hands behind it. Such a strategy on the part of the occupying forces would certainly fit in the neocons’ long-declared desire to break up Iraq into ethno-religious groups. And we certainly know that such tactics are not foreign to the American armed forces. Chomsky mentioned this less than three weeks ago on Common Dreams. Note second and third paragraphs below:
“Plainly, the 1985 Tunis bombing was a vastly more severe terrorist crime than the Achille Lauro hijacking, or the crime for which Moughniyeh’s “involvement can be ascertained with certainty” in the same year. But even the Tunis bombing had competitors for the prize for worst terrorist atrocity in the Mideast in the peak year of 1985.
One challenger was a car-bombing in Beirut right outside a mosque, timed to go off as worshippers were leaving Friday prayers. It killed 80 people and wounded 256. Most of the dead were girls and women, who had been leaving the mosque, though the ferocity of the blast “burned babies in their beds,” “killed a bride buying her trousseau,” and “blew away three children as they walked home from the mosque.” It also “devastated the main street of the densely populated” West Beirut suburb, reported Nora Boustany three years later in the Washington Post.
The intended target had been the Shi’ite cleric Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, who escaped. The bombing was carried out by Reagan’s CIA and his Saudi allies, with Britain’s help, and was specifically authorized by CIA Director William Casey, according to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s account in his book Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987. Little is known beyond the bare facts, thanks to rigorous adherence to the doctrine that we do not investigate our own crimes (unless they become too prominent to suppress, and the inquiry can be limited to some low-level “bad apples” who were naturally “out of control”).”
If Fisk reads these comments, I would like to know why he didn’t bring this up. One needn’t always have ironclad confirmation to ask legitimate questions
Thanx Clovis. I’m glad somebody aside from myself mentioned the false-flag angle on suicide-bombers. It is incredibly easy for the Mossad or CIA to use such patsies. Think of it.
The occupation forces are constantly taking prisoners. How much simpler can it be for them to attach remote detonation bombs to some poor fool and drop him off in a heavily populated area, perhaps even leading him to believe that he’s going after his real enemy - the imperialists occupants - while the real target is his own historically religious rivals?
They could very easily have used Shiites to bomb Sunnis and vica-versa, in this way, thus preventling these two factions from uniting against their real enemy, the occupants. There are many indications and reports, which have been suppressed, suggesting this is exactly what was done.
For anyone that disagrees and fails to understand the motivation for such false-flag ops, let me reiterate: The greatest threat to the occupation forces after the initial invasion of 03 was a unified Iraqi nation. For a while, Al Sadr was actually beginning to make allies with some Sunni groups, but then, BOOOOMM! There goes the Al Akashyria (sp?) shrine, and Shiites and Sunnis are at each others throats again.
Division to conquer is as old as Machiavelli himself, perhaps even older.
Hi Ya’ll……
josephmorton said:
“millions watching a rather pathetic whore’s web site”…..
just curious, sir…..
what web site are you alluding to?
all the best,
jeff
curmudgeon99,
I not so sure about your statement.
“Before the illegal and inhumane invasion in 2003, there was no strife between the sects”
I think Saddam was just keeping the lid on.
Robert Fisk as ever, presents a compelling, eye opening story and analysis.
I am a little surprised that he did not mention Robert Pape, (or did I miss that??) “Dying to Win..” In which Pape presents the 3 characteristic conditions that need to exist before these tragic situations can begin to occur. It is a very interesting read and well worth getting hold of it..
To save the lazy, the 3 characteristic are
1) An Overwhelming Oppressive Occupation by an enemy that has
2) A different religious outlook but also has
3) An effective Democracy at home.
You can see how it all hangs together..
The tragedy is that these figures just demonstrate the utter hatred for the occupying “liberators” .. and do not hold very much hope of any resolution until WE recognise the incomparable crimes of our so called leaders, against these people… And act on it.
BugsBBunny III ..
Do you believe that an F16, or Apache pilot (who draws a paycheck to drop death on anybody, sight unseen) is more dedicated to his/her cause than a person who looks into the eyes of their enemy, just before they themselves die??
Suicide bombing is the result of having to live with somebody somewhere far away telling you what the score is, and what you have to do, how you have to live, what is right, etc. After this foreign god is place in their midst they must then bow down at the insistence of armed storm troopers, the deities angels, I suppose. Hence, an entire people is placed up against the wall since they have by then been rendered voiceless. Voicelessness sounds like this: Boom!