If you ask most people this question, they will say something like, “If you do more good things than bad things, God will probably let you into heaven.” The above thinking will reserve your place in hell. You need FAITH IN THE BLOOD OF JESUS. There are no good deeds that you can do on your own that will erase the sins that you have committed. Jesus SHED BLOOD for you sins. He came to save you from the GUILT of past sins and the POWER of sin over your life. You are about to read the most important information that you will ever read. It is called the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Don’t believe it. And don’t believe it if someone tells you that you can go to heaven by blowing yourself up in a crowded market either. Never believe anyone that professes to know things that they have no authority or qualification to know.
The LA Times reports:
The frequency of suicide bombings here is unprecedented, exceeding the practice through years of the Palestinian uprising against Israel and other militant insurgencies such as the Chechen rebellion in Russia. Baghdad alone saw five suicide bombings in a six-hour span Sunday.
:::flip:::
The article goes on to claim that while the vast majority of resisters in Iraq are Iraqi, the vast majority of suicide bombers are not. I am little skeptical of that fact, after all, the article also notes that the bombers never carry identification and usually leave no identifiable body parts. So how do they know?
Yet, if it is true it certainly testifies to the effectiveness of the tactic.
Putting this all together, the LA Times is claiming that a tiny minority of non-Iraqi insurgents are responsible for the majority of casualties.
Even if this is an exaggeration, it is disturbing. Who are the adults that are allowing their sons to travel to Iraq and be talked into driving an explosive laden car into an Iraqi police station? Who are the Iraqis that are talking these people into ending their lives?
I’ll tell you who. Wingnuts.
Wingnuts come in two varieties and they both figure here. The first type of wingnut actually believes in his simplistic version of religion. The second type of wingnut is willing to cynically exploit the first. In fact, the second kind of wingnut relies on perpetuating a giant pool of the first type of wingnut in order to gain power and to exploit that power. Twas ever thus.
What we are observing in Iraq is a war between America’s first type of wingnut versus Islam’s first type of wingnut. Both sides are being led by the second type of wingnut.
On our side, we have soldiers dying because they think we are bringing freedom to Iraq. On their side we have kids dying because they have been told they will go to heaven and gain posthumous honors.
It’s sick. And I don’t want to hear about how suicide bombers are a legitimate tactic for an outgunned colonized guerilla army. Those bombers are/were human beings that have been lied to, coerced, and exploited. Most of them probably deserve an iota of sympathy. But they deserve no honors, and the people that sent them to their deaths are no soldiers.
I thought you might be interested in what my Iraqi friend Diva said in her blog about this subject, plus more you can read on her site:
The technique the callers for Jihad use is as old as human existence itself- and it’s fruitful!!! In order that these Islamic leaders and other extremist organizations levy large armies of young men they use “distorted” religious beliefs to manipulate the young and the vulnerable. During the Iraqi – Iranian war (1979 – 1980) a large number of Iraqi and Iranian soldiers who died fighting kept keys in their pockets. A martyr who falls in action goes straight to heaven and gets to open the gates of paradise with his own key!!!!!!
According to Islam, one way of rewarding the faithful and those who die in Jihad is a tremendous number of young and beautiful women to take care of them in heaven…The belief goes something like if a young man dies unmarried serving his cause in Jihad he will win the most beautiful young women in heaven. In this way Islamic leaders utilize the sexual tension among young men in a society where restrictions on sex goes hand in hand with moral hypocrisy and intimidation ,i.e., fear of punishment in life after death.
Religion is thus put in the service of politics. The frenzied, threatening crowds of boys seen on TV come from the ugliest tribal areas of Iraq , most of them can’t read or write and they, if unmarried, knew no woman but their mother…if they feel their religious faith is sincere they can’t bring themselves to know women outside wedlock or they are too poor or jobless that they can’t marry early, or they are mostly engaged in homosexual activity which provides only a partial satisfaction for a person who’s not a homosexual at all neither by physical features nor by personal taste. So if anyone who surrounds himself with a sacred halo like Al-Sader, for example approached them in the name of faith and the glory of God and asked them to do something , given the fairy-like heavenly beautiful rewards up there , they just would jump at it. You want to hear something funnier??
Many local TV networks displayed something like a farewell wedding party for those on their way to a suicidal attack, and when they asked the groom where the hell the bride is he answers proudly and confidently “She’s up there waiting for me!!!”!!!
Sadly, a fair number of suicide bombings in Israel are done by Palestinian teenagers (type 1’s) easily influenced by type 2’s. This activity was reported on NBC yesterday. Interesting that the Palestinian parents were upset not with Israel but with the type 2’s.
Hmmm,
I read an article which claimed that most suicide bombers
were political activists in desparate situations. Although,
I cannot put my finger on this reference at the moment,
I will at a later date. The claim that most of the suicide bombers
in the world were not motivated by some distorted interpretation
of religion was backed up by statistics. It was very persuasive.
Just as most wing-nuts in America are not really Christian
-are not followers of Jesus Christ. They have carefully selected
passages in the New Testament from St. Paul and Revelations
to excuse their bigotry and extremism but their motivations
are material and political.
That both types of wing-nuts are political animals pretending
to be religious zealots, makes more sense to me.
read articles put out by the Israelis that will say one thing, and you will read articles put out by pro-Palestinians that say another.
But there is no doubt that a man does not travel from Saudi Arabia to Tikrit to commit suicide unless he has been told a string of lies about what his reward will be.
A man in Tikrit who is so angry that he no longer cares whether he lives or dies is one kind of insurgent. He is no different from a GI that charges the lines of the enemy, facing certain death, to lob a grenade into their trench.
But I am talking about the cynical exploitation of young foreign boys by the Iraqi resistance.
or you could be underestimating the anger of the Arabian people 😉
or you could be overestimating the resources of the Resistance, and underestimating the Resolve of other entities to achieve their goals and objectives.
Does it matter?
for a number of reasons.
First of all, the majority of the 750 people these bombers have killed our Iraqis. I suspect most of the Iraqis were not even collaborating with the Americans or with the new Iraqi government. Whatever high-minded rationale you might craft for their actions rings pretty hollow in my ears as a consequence of these facts.
Iraqis are not known for suicidal tactics, by their own admission. This is a new and most unwelcome threat to their safety and security.
The LA Times article addresses the possibility that our actions have driven some Iraqis to suicidal tactics. I don’t doubt that they have. But I make a distinction between a person who makes the decision to stop living because he no longer has any greater desire than to avenge some wrong, or defend his country…and someone who brainwashes a young man from Yemen into ending his life.
And since most of the victims are innocent Muslims, they can’t even justify it as legitimate jihad.
But I am talking about the cynical exploitation of young foreign boys by the Iraqi resistance.”
I am not convinced that many of these “boys” are
travelling to Iraq in solidarity with the Iraqi
resistance. The Pentagon would like us to believe that
most of the suicide bombers in Iraq are from outside.
I remember the image of a Palestinian baba holding her
two-year old grandson up for the tv news cameras and
shouting that one day he will grow up to be a fighter – a
suicide bomber. This was after an Israeli attack on her
village. Many of these kids have been fed hatred and
revenge from the cradle by their own families.
They are ripe for the political movements which
convince them that the only way to fight is to give up
their lives.
In Iraq, there is a miriad of causes for revenge and
there is political desperation to get the foreign occupation out of the country.
Baghdad Burning
then you have the testimony of Diane’s Iraqi friend offering another perspective.
I agree the Pentagon wants us to believe that the Iraqi people love their new government and that all the resistance is coming from Saddamites and foreigners.
And I know that that is not true.
My critique is quite specific. I am condemning the use of a distorted and evil version of Islam to convince young men that they will be rewarded by killing themselves. I also condemn the targetting of innocent civilians, or even collaborating civilians without discrimination or thought for circumstances or bystanders.
And, as you all know, I condemn the use of fabricated evidence and US Government issued anthrax to whip up the American public into enough of a franzy of religious hatred to support launching this war in the first place.
Yes, your critique is specific and I agree that there are Mullahs who encourage young men and women to become suicide bombers. What I am saying is that the desire for revenge is planted in these ‘martyrs’ by their families before they meet the mullahs.
I think it is a mistake to believe that most of these murders in Iraq are primarily motivated by religious fervor. I’ve heard enough Muslim scholars say that the Koran does not encourage murder. Many religions encourage martyrdom but this 20th-century-plastic-explosives-terrorism was unheard of when their holy books were written.
That the increased suicide bombing in Iraq reflects the increasing revenge/despair over the US military occupation makes more sense to me than to believe that it is the result of some religious brainwashing. That brainwashing may be a factor, an encouragement, yes but the main incentives are political.
I agree with you except that I believe the political motives dominate the religious ones.
People may disagree on when it’s a sparkle or authentic.
People may disagree about the hadith (the Koran says everybody gets the same thing in heaven, you can argue whether that is angels, virgins, or raisins. Many people spend happy hours so engaged).
The one thing you can count on, though. There is no defense against suicide bombers.
In fact, there is no defense against any act by an individual, regardless of motivation or provenance, who is willing to die trying to take you with him.
Once you reach a critical level of certainty that you will die whether you do what I want or not, I just lost a big negotiating chunk.
A day or so after the Columbine school shootings, I remember overhearing a lady, who on learning that the shooters had killed themselves, said she thought that they should get the death penalty, then.
You could punish the peoples’ families, I guess. In fact, that is a popular policy in Israel, and the US pre-emptively seizes families of people they suspect might be opposed to US occupation, and just a few days ago, the US sentenced a man’s sister to death when they executed him after refusing to let him give her a kidney.
I doubt most suicide bombers even dream of such thorough victory.
but it is not right to manipulate young people by preying on their resentments and religious feelings, and telling them lies.
This goes for Bush and his junta, and it goes for the assholes brainwashing these kids in Iraq.
List the wars in which all sides have not manipulated young people by preying on their resentments and religious feelings and telling them lies. 🙂
It’s hard to get people to fight wars if you don’t tell them lies. This is actually a hopeful sign for the species.
The exception, of course is Resistance against invaders and occupiers. That works the opposite. There is nothing anybody can tell you that will convince you to sit on your hands and let somebody destroy your home and harm your family.
Now which attacks in Iraq are legitimate Resistance actions or US covert operations? At this point, all any of us can do, especially on a public message board, is opine. 🙂
“Cui bono?” is probably the most useful question in this regard.
Ethically, the most interesting question regarding legitimate Resistance attacks has to do with people waiting in line to become collaborators. They haven’t signed up yet, so are they technically still civilians, or by getting in the line have they declared their intent sufficiently to be legitimate targets?
Booman, I agree with your classification of the wingnut species (or as I prefer it name it, the nutwing), but in the end you accept the meme that the other side is composed of young’uns who know nothing except that they will go to the heavenly harem, etc. Don’t you think that’s kind of condescending? You build a wall between superstitious belief and political belief. In the real world it doesn’t tend to work that way.
Do you really think these people would go around blowing up themselves and others if their preachers told them it was necessary in order to bring cheap Pepsi to the ME? And that they’d get the virgins in heaven bla bla bla? If you don’t think so, then there must be a rational political component to their actions, right? Just like “our” side.
I’m curious about your last paragraph: “[They] are/were human beings that have been lied to, coerced, and exploited. Most of them probably deserve an iota of sympathy. But they deserve no honors, and the people that sent them to their deaths are no soldiers.”
Would you say that applies equally to the dead on “our” side? Is there some great moral difference between choosing sure death and taking a strong risk of death in a dubious cause? I come away from the article feeling that somehow the leaders on the other side end up being a lower moral order than the ones on “our” side. Not conducive to clear thinking, IMO.
Dave,
I didn’t sense that in Booman’s comments. That our side was on a morally higher ground. I read it as both sides of this battle were equally culpable for inciting the populations to destroy each others cultures in an attempt to bring about their own religious/political agenda’s. I could be wrong, yet I feel that I am correct in my assessment of where Booman is going in his essay. My ancestors bore the brunt of many of these same ideologies. Starting in the early 1800’s up to and including the 1930’s, where many Native children were taken from their families and forced to become Christians, denied the right to practice their own spiritual beliefs and speak their native languages. I don’t agree with any wingnut, regardless of theological process. I fervently believe that the sooner we remove our troops from any country that is currently occupied by our country, the sooner leveler heads will prevail and dialogue can begin and we can stop the killing from both sides of this equation.
there is an enormous difference.
I could fill a book trying to respond to the issue you raise. So, I’ll try to keep it narrow.
If I am an officer in Iraq and I send my men on a dangerous mission, they know they may die. They may think the mission is pointless. They may think the whole war is immoral. But they also know that if they live they will receive credit for serving. They may get medals and honors and promotions. They may become President one day.
I might bring in the chaplain before the mission, to provide comfort and motivation to my soldiers. But I am not going to tolerate my chaplain telling my young men that it will be glorious to die.
On the Iraqi side, if I send out a young man to lay a roadside bomb, or set up a mortar position, I know he may die. I’ll tell him that he is serving his nation, maybe even serving an assault on his religion. But I won’t send him on a mission if he no prospect of surviving, and I won’t tell him the entire point is to die.
There is a whole other level of cynicism and exploitation at play with these jihadis.
That you do think these jihadists would kill themselves and others to bring cheap Pepsi to the ME? You bypass the question of how much the harem-in-heaven meme is the sole motivation. I have yet to see any persuasive evidence of that.
“I’ll tell him that he is serving his nation, maybe even serving an assault on his religion. But I won’t send him on a mission if he no prospect of surviving, and I won’t tell him the entire point is to die.”
Bullshit. Read about MacArthur, Vietnam, or pretty much any other history of American wars. Missions with no prospect of surviving are SOP. But you clearly need to see “us” as morally superior in spite of everything, and there’s no rational argument against that.
that orders a mission with no prospect of survival is irresponsible. It has been done many times. But unless the mission allows a far greater force to escape, there is no justification for it.
Your cheap Pepsi thing is strange. It’s irrelevent. A key component of the harem-in-heaven meme is the killing of the infidel, or the defense of the faith. You cannot get rewards in heaven for obtaining cheap Pepsi.
is about your assumption that the suicide bombers are simply robots doing what they have to do to get to the paradise promised by their clerics. That they have no political motivations or goals. I don’t see any evidence for that, and I think it’s condescending. Everything I read says that they are not “ordered” to their suicide acts, but eagerly volunteer on the basis of religious and political beliefs.
My only problem with your formulation is your unwillingness to take your own premises to their conclusion: that there is no difference between their wingnut leaders and “ours”. You got there, but then had to add a last paragraph to serve the ol’ “God bless America” function.
I understand the point you are trying to make. I just think you are making an unfair reading of what I wrote.
I didn’t start the essay with a quote from the Koran, did I? I explicitly made the point that this is a war between wingnuts.
I never said that all the suicide bombers were non-Iraqis, nor did I say that their sole purpose was to get to heaven.
The pentagon is sending US troops trained for combat to
police a fiercely hated occupation. It sends them on a
very dangerous mission and it tells them that
they are fighting for ‘freedom and democracy.’
As a matter of fact, when a Marine is killed in Iraq, a
uniformed Marine is sent to the family’s door to tell
them that their son or daughter died for ‘freedom.’
I made the parallel explicit in my essay.
I was thinking of the ‘suicide mission’ parallel.
I made it clear that I am skeptical about the degree to which foreigners are responsible for the bombings. But I do believe that it is going on.
I made a distinction between an Iraqi who has vengeance on his mind, or genuinely patriotic motives, and someone who has travelled to Iraq for the purpose of committing suicide.
Lastly, I am not really making a judgment on the validity of the motives for fighting by either side. I am making a judgment about the tactics of the field commanders.
I have spoken about boneheaded and immoral tactics used by our side in other articles.
Here, I am talking about boneheaded and immoral tactics being used by the other side.
DaveW sees no moral difference between the two sides. I see a moral difference in the use of these suicide tactics.
Both sides are carrying out attacks using non-Iraqis to kill Iraqis indiscriminately. Both sides are led by cynical troglydites with suspect motives. But only their side is abusing their own soldiers by subjecting them to certain death with the promise of false rewards.
telling recruits they will go to heaven
or telling them they are fighting for freedom.
It’s all propoganda/lies/manipulation.
But are the Iraqi suicide bombers being motivated
by dreams of heaven or are they MOSTLY motivated
by the hated US military occupation. It’s political
action against the occupation.
If your version were true why were there no suicide
bombers in Saddam Hussein’s reign. He was a secular
ruler and he suppressed religious fanaticism.
As horrible as he was, he did not inspire fanatics to
go to those extremes for their religion with heaven
in their sights. MOSTLY he did not make weapons available to Iraqi people the way that the US occupation has done from the very beginning.
I don’t think you are correct that there were no suicidal attempts to kill Saddam and/or his sons. Saddam did not publicize such events for good reason.
But it is more complicated. Saddam claimed to be a Muslim, and he claimed that more and more after the Gulf War. It is possible to wage jihad against an usurper of the faith. In fact, that is UBL’s justification for attacks on the House of Saud, and for EIJ’s attacks on Sadat and Mubarak. But these actions are more controversial than attacks against Christian occupation, and they generate less support, and less certainty of heavenly rewards.
These is a political motivation to fight and try to kill Americans, and the new Iraqi government, and ordinary Iraqis that cooperate or gain employment with the above.
But fighting is not the same thing as suicide.
Suicide bombing is the last resort weapon of
the desperate. It is more effective than the
other weapons at the disposal of the Iraqi
resistance: mortars, shoulder launched grenades,
kalashnikovs, and car/roadside bombs.
Example:
the bomber who got inside a US military mess tent.
It’s use in Iraq will increase as the days
of US military occupation drag on.