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Posted on 06/03/2004 7:45:11 PM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
Suicide bombing is advocated by privileged elites
As suicide bombings increase in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia and in Israel, more and more people have come to believe that this tactic is a result of desperation. They see a direct link between oppression, occupation, poverty and humiliation on the one hand, and a willingness to blow oneself up for the cause on the other. It follows from this that the remedy for suicide bombing is to address its root cause - namely, our oppression of the terrorists.
But the underlying premise is false: there is no such link. Suicide bombing is a tactic that is selected by privileged, educated people because it has proven successful. Some of the suicide bombers themselves defy the stereotype of the impoverished victims driven to desperate measures. Remember the 9/11 bombers, several of whom were university students and none of whom was oppressed by the US. They were dispatched by a Saudi millionaire named Osama bin Laden, who has now become the hero of many other upper-class Saudis who are volunteering to become shahids (martyrs).
Majid al-Enezi, a Saudi student training to become a computer technician, recently changed career plans; he crossed over into Iraq, where he died. His brother Abdullah celebrated that decision. "People are calling all the time to congratulate us, crying from happiness and envy."
Why do these overprivileged young people support this culture of death, while impoverished and oppressed Tibetans continue to celebrate life despite their occupation by China?
Historically, why have other oppressed people not resorted to suicide bombings and terrorism? The answer lies in differences among the elite leadership of various causes. The leaders of Islamist radical causes, especially the Wahhabis, incite suicide terrorism, while the leaders of other causes advocate different means. Recall Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, who advocated non-violent means of resistance.
The bombers accept death because they have been incited by imams preaching "Kill the infidels". Sheikh Muhammad Sayed Tantawi, the leading Islamic scholar at the elite al-Azhar University in Cairo, has declared that martyrdom operations - ie suicide bombings - are the highest form of jihad.
Occupation makes it more difficult to launch successful terrorist attacks. This is not to argue for occupation; it is to separate the arguments regarding occupation from the claim that it is the fact of occupation that causes suicide bombing. Indeed, were Israel to end its occupation of Gaza and most of the West Bank (as I have long believed it should), it is likely that terrorism would increase. The same might be true in Iraq, if the US were to pick up and run.
The time has come to address the real root cause of suicide bombing: incitement by certain religious and political leaders who are creating a culture of death and exploiting the ambiguous teachings of an important religion. Islamist young people are in love with death, claim some imams; but it is these leaders who are arranging the marriages between the children and the bomb belts.
Ping
I do believe some people would debate the ambiguity of the 'teachings'.
I'm awestruck! Some words of sense out of the mouth of Alan Dershowitz. Simply amazing.
"Islamist young people are in love with death, claim some imams; but it is these leaders who are arranging the marriages between the children and the bomb belts."
It's the leaders, old psycho's like Bin Laden and Arafat that introduce their brainwashed stooges to this suicide cult.
That culture needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world.
I am from "Alan D. Country" and mostly revile his views. I actually had to sit accross from him at an L/Bird M/Johnson (Celtics/Leakers) playoff-- late 80's- pre-kid) whle he literally spewed a hot dog and yapped on his cell phone! Let's talk revolting!! This is the most intelligent thing he has said, and in spite of the fact that he makes me sick, he's been a tolerably good Israeli voice of reason since 9/11
WARNING: This is a high volume ping list
Alan Dershowitz, for all his liberal spewing, did receive a solid Jewish education early in life. Thanks to this he occasionally exhibits a glimmer of good common sense.
There is more hope for him than there is for Thomas ("I Heart Prince Abdullah") Friedman.
I thought Alan Dershowitz was in lock-step with the Socialists. Has he converted?
Dershowitz merely hates Islam more than Christianity.
I disagree. The leaders aren't the root cause, they are the instruments.
To find the root cause you must take the next step and ask WHY the leaders are inciting suicide bombers.
Are they doing it for money, power, love, revenge, religious visions, boredom, bipolar disorders, self-hatred, ...
Not exactly an original cut on the gutter sect [Islamofascism]of murder and various other forms of destruction. Moreover, every so often even a cuckoo clock tells the right time. And when, exactly, may we expect the suddenly empathic Dearthowitz to level a similar indictment against the perpetrators of the American Holocaust, the "pro choice" baby killers and their enablers? I am not holding my breath.
Wake me up when he comes out in support of the 2nd Amendment.
Dershowitz is very outspoken hawk on this issue and anything to do with Israel. I was amazed when I 1st read some of his articles regaurding terrorism.
MEIN KAMPF = MEIN KORAN
That culture needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world.
read later bump
That is the problem. These scumbags publicly go out and praise the murderers of schoolgirls and infants, and the western world shrugs and says, "freedom of speech."
Western civilization was ascendant when it would not tolerate such evil.
The only major religion whose believers can be considered criminally insane.
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