<The actions of the US prison guards at Abu Grhaib played on what it meant to be an honourable self respecting subject in Iraqi society.>

So they suffered some humiliation. The prisoners the Arab freedom fighters took, were killed or had their throats cut on national television not to mention the probable rape and killing of their female hostages so they couldn't reveal the rape. Just recently some of their hostages were found dead in the street with electric drill holes all over them.

Humiliation won't kill you. What do you expect the Americans to do sit their attackers down and give them lamingtons and a cup of tea.
They'd all be lining up to be captured. The way some of these moslem men humiliate their women it wouldn't hurt them to suffer a bit of humiliation themselves anyway.

You say the suicide attacks carried out in Iraq increased dramatically after the photos at Abu Ghraib were shown. A lot of those suicide attacks were directed at other moslems. Shiites killing Sunnis and Sunnis killing Shiites over which tribe was going to govern Iraq.

The Japanese practised suicide bombing too, as the Allies advanced on Japan at the end of World War 2. They flew their planes directly into warships. Blew themselves and the warships up. No religious agenda with the Japanese. Just purely defence of their people and homeland.

That's what terrorist attacks are, males with their warrior intincts in full unchecked mode, attempting to defend their tribe or people because that is what the males role in nature is.

And that's why there is an everpresent danger of these attacks in any multicultural society when groups of males perceive some kind of threat or injustice to their ethnic group. I don't just mean the moslems I mean any ethnic group white,chinese,whoever, who feel threatened by the other group in some way. Even Sunnis and Shiites.

One glaring omission from the article - suicide bombers are almost always followers of the Islamic religion, now what's with that? And how does it gel with the article's contention that the motive is rarely grounded in religion? Perhaps Muslims throughout the world are persecuted more than anyone else. Perhaps no one else has a reason to resort to such extreme measures. The IRA never took to it, not that I'm aware of. It would seem to me that it's just a done thing for Muslims at that extreme end of the spectrum, it's the Jihad mentality - slaughter thy enemy and claim your numerous virgins. The 4 Corners doco (BBC sourced I beleive) about the Mumbai attacks had real conversations between the pawns and their leaders, whilst the high level motive was political (India vs Pakistan) it certainly seemed that religion was used to justify and motivate the pawns to fight to their own deaths.

People become suicide bombers because they are afraid not to be. The reasons are not religious or political – they are much more personal and have their foundations in dysfunctional family relationships.

Suicide bombing is not a rational act. It is something that has been brewing inside an individual from a very young age. Children are not born suicide bombers they become such because it seems to provide an escape from what they perceive as an impossible trap. Many lone suicides have the same rationale.

Children who are raised on a diet of fear by fanatically religious parents spend their whole lives entrapped between the demands of childhood survival and the instincts of their own feelings. It doesn’t make sense to a child to be beaten because it takes delight in the simple joys of life. The child represses any expression of delight or freedom of speech because its survival depends on pleasing the neurotic demands of its parents. Sometimes those survival mechanisms become so desperate and distorted that a child has to do extreme violence to its nature in order to keep alive. These attitudes become so ingrained that even when they reach maturity they are still trying to ‘please’ their parents in order to survive. They are unable to act rationally as an adult able to meet their own needs for survival. They become suicide bombers not because of religion or politics but because of a far greater imperative – the desire to survive. Nothing short of this would make these people do what they do. The fact that hundreds of innocent bystanders are also killed is outside of their scope of feeling.

There are many other people who wreak as much havoc in the world out of fears that belong to their childhood. Corporate greed causes the death of thousands. Drug barons contribute to the demise of millions. Ruthless dictators practice genocide. Most of these behaviours can be traced to upbringing.

It is too naïve to ask the bombers why they are prepared to bomb and to accept their own self-analysis.

Of course we dreadfully sane Westerners are not into suicide bombing--are we.

We use unmanned satellite guided drones, or launch cruise missiles from the safety of bunkers on the other side of the planet.

Plus how much money is spent every day in the now booming world-wide armaments race, most of which is produced by the dreadfully sane Western countries, which also includes Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe. And South America too.

Death is in the air, or rather the collective psyche of humankind altogether.

World-wide casual mega-death is now the only game in town, or rather, the entire planet.

The first line of your article sets up the most incorrect, misleading and sleazily anti muslim article I have recently seen on OLO.

<<Suicide bombing attacks have become a weapon of choice among terrorist groups because of their lethality and ability to cause mayhem and fear.>>

Crap! They do it because it is the only weapon they have left against massively overpowered and threatening enemies. Do you seriously say that these people WANT to die? It is a proven fact that the will to live is one of humanities strongest drives and it is only total and utter hopelessness or rabid, insane religious beliefs that can overcome it. If they had guns and tanks and nuclear weapons like we have I seriously doubt they would contemplate sacrificing themselves to kill their enemies.

Mikki <If they had guns and tanks and nuclear weapons like we have I doubt they’d contemplate sacrificing themselves to kill their enemy.>
True, and if they ever get those weapons you and most people on this planet can kiss your freedoms goodbye. Hitler stated he wanted a German state world wide and the Moslems have said the same,(we want a Moslem state world wide), they may succeed in bringing the world under the moslem heel where Hitler failed .

<The will to live is one of humanities strongest drives it is only total and utter hopelessness or rabid, insane religious belief that can overcome it.>
This is also true, but why are they totally hopeless, or rabidly, insanely religious, their own doing surely.
And the suicide bombers in Western countries have nothing to be hopeless about , they live in the richest countries in the world. If they can’t adapt and live like the Westerners do then why do they come here.
-

Pure sour grapes on part of the Muslims is all I can say. They are a very proud people and because they have not been getting their comeupmanship in the world of late, they are testy and very dissatisfied. Another outlet for them is honour crimes committed on their women.

I wonder what the people that design all of our hi-tech weapons such as nuclear bombs, cluster bombs, Moab bombs, daisy-cutter bombs, etc etc etc and so on, say to their wives and children when they go home from work.

Hi honey, we finally did it, our new "baby" is going into production today,

What baby honey (or dad)?

The one that can obliterate, or shred, or vapourize all living things within a square smile, or even entire cities.

Wow honey/daddy, can you show me how it works, or even give us a demonstration.

Having created/birthed this monstrous baby/offspring, the dreadfully sane loving father will then probably make love to his wife.

Such people are given high honours in the USA.
Robert Oppenheimer who was the "father" of the atomic bomb was the father of the year in the USA after Hiroshima.

Edward Teller, the "father" of the hydrogen bomb was awarded the "Freedom" medal for his services.

Oppenheimer, Teller, and other "fathers of the bomb" were widely heroized after world war ll.

Astutely their colleague Leo Szilard observed: "It is remarkable that all these scientists...should be listened to, but mass murderers have always commanded the attention of the public, and atomic scientists are no exception to this rule".

Ho Hum,
I agree with you that the invention of these weapons is horrific.
There is also the invention of the motorcar, which has killed over 6million people worldwide .(not intentionally, as with the atomic bomb though), But even without atomic bombs the Japanese managed to kill 15million Chinese during their occupation in the years before World War Two.

Japan repeatedly refused to surrender, and the allies having lost thousands and thousands of men didn’t want to loose any more of their fathers and sons in a long drawn out battle to take the Japanese homeland in a result that was inevitable in the long run anyway. By refusing to surrender, the Japanese put the allies in a postion of losing thousands and thousands more of their loved ones or ending it immediately. The commanders came down on the side of ending it immediately.
And the horrific bombing resulted.

Japan sent bombing raids (not atomic bombs) to my city up here in North Queensland and my Dad still remembers being in bomb shelters with his parents when the raids happened. I myself stood near a big bomb crater, when I was a child, from one of the bombs that only just missed the only bridge north or south , presumably to stop Australian and American Armies from crossing the river north or south.
Nobody with any imagination would like one of these dam atomic or nuclear weapons to go off in their city and the thought of the horror of it when it was done in Japan certainly haunts the minds of most people when they think deeply about it.

You missed the MAIN POINT... "the majority of suicide bombers tend to be young males"

Muslim religion supports powerfull men having many wives...

But since (virtually) equal numbers of baby boys and girls are born each year, this means many men are going to die as virgins, without the joy of sex, let alone knowing the deep satisfaction and happiess of experiencing LOVE, or fatherhood. These poor men live and die as worker drones, as virgin eunuchs. (I would love to read write "the Male Eunuch", the companion to Germain Greer's "Female Eunuch")

The Muslim owrld PROTECTS women in a 'guilded cage', but it treats men as totally disposable.

Powerfull male owners of harems rarely become suicide bombers... but angry, pathetic males, looking at the chioce between life-long virginity, or having the pleasures of 72 virgins till the end of time if he dies in a 'jihad' suicide bombing... must be pretty tempting.

Look at the remaining population in any of the most fraught Muslim nations... Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Chechnya, or all across northern Africa (for example, Rwanda).. you see many more LIVING women than men.

Since virtually equal numbers of boys and girls are born, the only explainations are:
- that MALE life is much cheaper then female lives.
- That men live in a much more violent world than women.
- That wile Islam restricts women, it kills men.

PartTimeParent@pobox.com

Sharkfin -

Just to add a little more to what you're saying. I once saw a documentary on prisoners of war that said that towards the end of the war, something like 500 prisoners a day were dying. Every day that the allies delayed cost other lives elsewhere.

Also, and just to ensure that nobody forgets: the Japanese rebuffed warnings and ultimatums. Japanese leaders had it in their power to prevent the bombings but chose not to. There were then two bombings. Even with the first awful bomb drop there was no surrender. Two or three days later the second bomb was dropped at Nagasaki.