Cause and Detect

#13 T-Bhai Saab:

Please don’t get too nostalgic about the “good old days” of the cold war – what you euphemistically called the days of “checks and balances”. The Soviet bear from the seventies and eighties knew no balance – thank God the Americans were able to check, then checkmate him! The present “unipolar” world is a vast, vast improvement – at least we don’t go to bed dreading if there will still be a tomorrow for the world – remember, the time for those nuclear ICBM’s to cross the globe was less than an hour! I will take a few (or more) suicide bombers any day! (Interesting discussion about cults – but it’s not a smart idea to lump all of them together – especially the ones which are inward-looking with those which are not!)

#4 Mitra Sahib

Let’s cut out that crap about how heartbroken the parents get and how it is all the fault of those narrow-minded uneducated Mullahs. That model has long been discarded. Children learn what they learn from the following sources and in the following decreasing order of importance (1) parents, (2) school, (3) society, (4) media. Mullahs are just one weak element of the third source – the parents are (and have forever been) numero uno!

#13 by temporal

You raise important issues. This topic of suicide bombing is such a strange animal and has simply far too many facets for one person to really put their arms around. I have been flirting with this topic from many angles which you can check on my blog. That said, my specific points (long post here as well :))

1. This was a slightly satrical piece aimed at the root causers so to say. It was aimed at trying to show the impact of terrorist from the victim`s perspective. I urge all to read the book which I referred to. It was not oriented towards trying to explain the reasons behind why suicide bombers come up.

2. I am afraid I have to disagree with your statement that this is assymetrical warfare. Yes, I understand the logic and argument which you are making, but I am afraid I have a different take on it. Soldiers dying for their comrades or going to blow up a tank with a satchel full of grenades are not considered to be suicide terrorism. Its when civilians are targeted with expressedly political or religious ideological basis that we call it suicide terrorism. Its ideology, tamil tigers or hizbollah or the saudi volunteers are not really going up against the BIG weapons, they go after the easy meat/victims. Their objective isn`t to go up against the military but to go after the infidel/civilian/other/you name it. The tamil tigers who went up against the sri lankans were roughly equal in parity but still used it. It’s a remarkably effective weapon, and if your ideology (marxism, separatism, islamism) is powerful enough, you will get the useful idiots to carry this out for you. It is just another communication means (excluding the military benefits), a potent and shocking one, but just communication at end of the day. They are sending a message, temporal. But yes, this needs good treatment and have stored this for another column another day :), thank you for the idea.

3. This doesn’t sound good either but brainwashing can easily be termed as faith. Take for example the tantrics or aghori`s of Hinduism, the naked monks in jainism, the bloody Christian pilgrims in christianity who wear crowns of thorns, the ma`atm of Shia`s, these are expressions of piety which, when looked at from a certain perspective, does resemble brainwashing. Putting it in another way, if I did this type of behaviour and wanted to explain to say a rational, secular and dare I say westernised chap, I would not be able to explain more than just say its my way to god and that`s my faith. And you will be fully justified in saying that I am brainwashed. Is that wrong? Is that right? Difficult question, my friend. Misguided? Only for a person who is on another path. This is why it is notoriously difficult to deal with issues around faith. As for a column on this, I am hesitant to even broach this topic, very difficult to do justice to it without sounding like a hysterical carpet muncher, difficult to see this topic from both sides.

temporal #13 So you think suicide bombing is a means to balance power internationally. Wrong answer. You get an F, sorry to say. This is why:

Suicide bombers, while they destroy lives of those unfortunate enough to be travelling in the same bus or plane with them, do not put a dent on society. More people are killed every day in traffic accidents daily than suicide bombers kill in an year. You would be more accurate if you claimed that drunk drivers are a means to balance power internationally.