Posted on 01/18/2002 5:48:47 AM PST by veronica
This past summer I had a spirited discussion with a prominent historian. He assured me that the wave of suicide bombings on the West Bank marked "a revolutionary" break with the past.
It was a "new" tactic, he said — one for which Israel and other free societies simply had no antidote. "You see," he confidently announced, "when people wish to kill you more than they want to live, theirs is a cause that won't die." I replied that there that had been no kamikazes since the surrender of Japan on August 15, 1945 — and that Japanese militarism still seemed quite dead to me.
There is no doubt that suicide bombing portends terrible things for citizens of affluent democracies. What sort of sinister zeal possesses men to give up their lives to kill others? Why would these killers hate us to such a degree as to destroy themselves and us at once? Why do they prefer the next world to the present one?
I. "Holy" Warriors Are Not New
Warriors who deliberately seek death in battle — whether to end their own misery amid certain defeat, to undergo offensive missions that hold out no chance of their own survival, or to kill the enemy without hope of escape — are not altogether rare in history. When nearly surrounded, King Leonidas of Sparta sent away thousands of his army from Thermopylae in 480 B.C. There, with his remaining 299 Spartans and a few hundred Thespians and Thebans, he prepared to leave the confines of the pass and charge out to fight amid a sea of thousands of Persian troops. "Fight with great courage," the king told his Spartans hours before annihilation. "Today we will dine among the dead."
During the failed Jewish revolt of A.D. 73, when the last enclave of the zealots at Masada was surrounded, and before the Roman besiegers could storm the stronghold, the rebels under Eleazar ben Yair killed themselves. By the historian Josephus's count, all but seven of some 960 trapped men, women, and children perished. Hitler's order, in January 1943, for the encircled garrison at Stalingrad to shun escape or surrender and fight to the last man was equivalent to suicide for thousands.
Yet, the September 11 terrorists were somewhat different — more like the Japanese death brigades of World War II, who in their organization and training killed on a scale never seen before or since in civilized warfare. Thousands of Japanese flew as suicide pilots, commandeered ramming-boats, manned one-way rocket planes, or (as infantrymen) organized death charges. Many foot soldiers fought with dynamite satchels or grenades strapped to their bodies.
In all these cases, the sole intention was to kill as many of the enemy as possible before meeting certain death. A new fanaticism — a lethal mix of Shintoism, Buddhism, and Bushido — promised a better life in the hereafter, where warrior souls would enjoy a divine existence in return for their sacrifice on earth. The destruction of Japanese parliamentary government in the 1930s, and the rise of a dictatorship, had already
You mean like the original article?
The way to cure suicide bombers is to kill them all before they get a chance to kill you.
--Boris
They prefer the next world because they obviously believe it's got to be better than this one.
It seems to me that you usually won't find suicide bombers among the ranks of the athiests. They've got everything to lose, and nothing to gain.
your statement proves that this is a war against a religion.....i love GWB....but all of the pc BS that this is not a war against islam will not change the fact that it IS !!!!
Yep. They lost me as soon as they called psychology a "science." The concept of the scientific method is unknown to the field of psychology as practiced today.
I've been in favor of the creation of a Palestinian State for over 20 years, and still am, but clearly the Palestinians are not ready for it. Indeed they don't even want it if it means making peace with Israel. I am now convinced that Israel must REOCCUPY the territories. The world can try to talk the Palestinians into accepting a peacefully negotiated State in another 10 or 20 years. Maybe next time they won't throw a tantrum and have to be put in "time out".
No. I thought the exact same thing. Seinfeld disguised as a Saudi...
Funny. If I were an atheist, I'd be more inclined to commit suicide because (assuming I'd done it successfully) I'd be sure no punishment awaited me. I'd take out a few enemies and die, game over.
Nonetheless, history is on your side here. Atheists are terrible at organizing fatwahs and jihads. And they're usually so anal and selfish that they could hardly be bothered to do something for the community. Why should they, since there's nothing in it for THEM!
'The discovery of a major spy ring inside the United States is straining the already tense relations with Israel. Although, Israel denied any involvement with the penetration of the U.S. wiretap system, the CIA and FBI are investigating the direct government ties to the former Israeli military and intelligence officials now being held by the Justice Department.'
(alarm clock ringing) Time to wake up, Veronica.
Yes the whole thing is a yawner. Always was.
BTW - what does it have to do with suicide bombers?
This past summer I had a spirited discussion with a prominent historian. He assured me that the wave of suicide bombings on the West Bank marked "a revolutionary" break with the past. It was a "new" tactic, he said — one for which Israel and other free societies simply had no antidote. "You see," he confidently announced, "when people wish to kill you more than they want to live, theirs is a cause that won't die." I replied that there that had been no kamikazes since the surrender of Japan on August 15, 1945 — and that Japanese militarism still seemed quite dead to me.
There is no doubt that suicide bombing portends terrible things for citizens of affluent democracies. What sort of sinister zeal possesses men to give up their lives to kill others? Why would these killers hate us to such a degree as to destroy themselves and us at once? Why do they prefer the next world to the present one?
I. "Holy" Warriors Are Not New
Warriors who deliberately seek death in battle — whether to end their own misery amid certain defeat, to undergo offensive missions that hold out no chance of their own survival, or to kill the enemy without hope of escape — are not altogether rare in history. When nearly surrounded, King Leonidas of Sparta sent away thousands of his army from Thermopylae in 480 B.C. There, with his remaining 299 Spartans and a few hundred Thespians and Thebans, he prepared to leave the confines of the pass and charge out to fight amid a sea of thousands of Persian troops. "Fight with great courage," the king told his Spartans hours before annihilation. "Today we will dine among the dead."
During the failed Jewish revolt of A.D. 73, when the last enclave of the zealots at Masada was surrounded, and before the Roman besiegers could storm the stronghold, the rebels under Eleazar ben Yair killed themselves. By the historian Josephus's count, all but seven of some 960 trapped men, women, and children perished. Hitler's order, in January 1943, for the encircled garrison at Stalingrad to shun escape or surrender and fight to the last man was equivalent to suicide for thousands.
Yet, the September 11 terrorists were somewhat different — more like the Japanese death brigades of World War II, who in their organization and training killed on a scale never seen before or since in civilized warfare. Thousands of Japanese flew as suicide pilots, commandeered ramming-boats, manned one-way rocket planes, or (as infantrymen) organized death charges. Many foot soldiers fought with dynamite satchels or grenades strapped to their bodies.
In all these cases, the sole intention was to kill as many of the enemy as possible before meeting certain death. A new fanaticism — a lethal mix of Shintoism, Buddhism, and Bushido — promised a better life in the hereafter, where warrior souls would enjoy a divine existence in return for their sacrifice on earth. The destruction of Japanese parliamentary government in the 1930s, and the rise of a dictatorship, had already helped to create the authoritarian state necessary for the kamikazes — and desperation was the final ingredient. By late 1944, obsolete planes and green pilots could no longer stop a massive American fleet and air force headed for the Japanese mainland.
The climactic struggle between democratic and suicidal forces was the battle for Okinawa, called Operation "Holy War" (Ten go) by the Japanese. Between April 1 and July 2, 1945, over 110,000 Japanese died — nearly to the last man (barely more than 7,000 were taken prisoner). Yet the defenders killed over 12,000 Americans, inflicting an additional 30,000 casualties. Among the dead were 5,000 American sailors, victims largely of the nearly 2,000 kamikaze attacks against the American fleet.
II. The Divine Wind (Kamikaze) What can we learn from this, history's only real example of a democracy facing organized suicide attackers? There are uncanny similarities between 1945 and 2001, despite the vast differences across time and space. Japanese kamikazes were young and impressionable — mostly between 18 and 24. They were convinced by older, more cynical officers (many of whom would survive the war) that their sacrifice would gain them paradise, and that suicide missions were the only mechanism left to stop a murderous America that wished to destroy — not merely defeat — the Japanese people.
Once the squadrons were organized, very little training was required. Return landings would, of course, be unnecessary. In the case of the Ohka — manned rockets dropped from Betty bombers — pilots did not need even the rudimentary skills required for taking off. In a sense, Japanese planners figured that America's technological and organizational preeminence could be nullified by suicide pilots, who became, in effect, early cruise missiles. A once-obsolete Zero fighter, when piloted by a kamikaze, suddenly became as deadly as far more expensive and sophisticated German V-1 and V-2 rockets — and much more accurate, too, since it could change course and trajectory in mid-flight. In the right circumstances, the brain of a man determined to die can be more effective than any computer.
Moreover, much of Western superiority in military design and expense was invested in protecting the attacker — armor plating, parachutes, self-sealing gas tanks, extensive training, sea and air rescue — and thus was quite unnecessary on one-way missions. In the same way, our present-day fundamentalists discovered that it did not take much skill to pilot even a sophisticated jet — provided there was no takeoff or landing required, and that the purpose was simply to crash into a rather large target. Today's skyscrapers, after all, were as prominent objectives as yesterday's fleet carriers or battleships.
Then and now, a man with little training — powered by fanatical zeal and hatred for the West, full of delusions of paradise, relatively young, and recruited and trained by professional militarists — could do quite a lot of damage to initially unprepared Americans. If, in the past, a Japanese kamikaze (who had little or no chance of sinking an American ship in a conventional attack himself) could raise havoc on the carrier Bunker Hill, and kill hundreds in the process — so too an otherwise impotent al Qaeda terrorist might topple a billion-dollar building and kill thousands, thanks to his willingness to die.
We, like our forefathers — who saw 36 ships lost and another 368 damaged at Okinawa (the greatest single battle losses in the history of the U.S. Navy), were stunned by the audacity and effectiveness of the September 11 terrorists and the rumors of more to come. But just as astounding as the initial suicide bombings off Okinawa, and in Washington and New York, was — in both cases — the swift and terrible response of the Americans.
In 1945, picket destroyers, improved radar, increased sorties, and bombing of bases on the mainland ensured that not a single battleship or carrier was actually sunk. On Okinawa itself, horrific flamethrowers and fire-spouting tanks were introduced to incinerate would-be suicidal troops. Increased nighttime watches and strict fire control, coupled with integrated artillery and naval gunfire, blew apart banzai charges. The result was that upon the conclusion of the ghastly battle of Okinawa, most veteran imperial land forces were ruined, the last vestiges of the Japanese navy destroyed (the suicidal cruise of the battleship Yamato being a complete failure), and the air forces rendered nearly impotent.
Moreover, there were reports of last-minute hesitancy and even ditching by kamikazes. Later accounts described drunkenness and near-insurrection as pilots had to be drafted, and were no longer solely volunteers. Much is made of the supposed 5,000 kamikazes waiting on the mainland for the American invasion. But more likely was that they comprised only a few thousands, from an angry society of hundreds of millions, willing to blow themselves up to kill Americans. We shall never know what would have transpired had the Americans invaded Japanese home soil. Yet for some five weeks after Okinawa, the American fleet was in still in range of land-based enemy planes, thousands of aircraft remained on the homeland — and kamikazes attacks were rare.
After Okinawa was declared secure on July 2, only five more suicide sorties were reported before the surrender on August 15. Had the Japanese simply run out of willing pilots, or were they saving their reserve kamikazes for the final assault? America, of course, took no chances, and prepared extraordinary measures to neutralize the kamikaze threat during the planned invasion.
Similarly, after this terrible past September of 2001, the West was told that thousands of Islamic fundamentalists were ready to bomb America, Europe, and Israel. In fact, there were only a few hundred, from an angry society of hundreds of millions, willing to vaporize themselves to kill Americans. Alarmists, these past few months, have recalled the kamikazes; realists should remember how they were dealt with. We may well have more bombings, but the attacks are finite — and the remedy proven.
III. Lessons From the Past
In 1945, the terror of suicide brought out the greater terror of the Western way of war. Grim Americans left Okinawa with a changed mentality about the nature of battle itself: From then on, the fanaticism of the human will to die would be repaid in kind by the greater fanaticism of the industrial and technological power to live. Okinawa taught the world that the chief horror of war is not the random use of suicide bombers, but the fervent response they will incur from Western industrial powers — as seen at Hiroshima.
The restraint upon Americans' singular ingenuity for making war usually rests only with their own moral reluctance — a brake that suicidal attack seems to strip away entirely. It was not surprising, but entirely predictable, that a nation that 60 years ago produced napalm, flamethrowers, and — eventually — A-bombs to combat the specter of thousands of suicidal warriors would retain the dark imagination, organization, and willpower to blast apart a few hundred suicide bombers and their enclaves of support in Afghanistan.
In this recent war, the West's military referents for the Islamic fundamentalists of the present have been the fanatical kamikazes of the past. This autumn their letters were published in newspapers, and veterans of the conflict relived the horror on television. We sensed that kamikazes and al Qaeda terrorists alike strike at the very psyche of the Western mind, which is repelled by the religious fanaticism, the authoritarianism, or perhaps the despair, of such enemies — confirming that wars are sometimes not just misunderstandings over policy, or the reckless actions of a deranged leader, but accurate reflections of real and fundamental differences in culture and society.
Yet in precisely the same way as kamikazes off Okinawa led to frightful measures of mass destruction, so too jumbo jets exploding at the World Trade Center were the logical precursors to daisy cutters and bunker busters in Afghanistan, as an unleashed America resounded with a terrible fury and effectiveness not seen since 1945. And it is not over yet. A roused and angry mind at Caltech or in Silicon Valley, with a wife, kids, dog, and house in the suburbs, can conjure up far more lethal weapons and strategies than can any madman from the Middle East.
There is a lesson here that al Qaeda bombers, their leaders, and their sponsors should ponder, as they seek to die to kill those who so desperately wish to protect and defend — and to live.
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