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August 25, 2003
The World As Battlefield
Mark Steyn makes some excellent points, as usual, in today's WashTimes column.
The suicide bomber is a symbol of weakness, of a culture so comprehensively failed that what ought to be its greatest resource — its people — is instead as disposable as a firecracker.
As history shows, this strategy didn't work too well for the Japanese. Or to look a bit farther back, it is also analogous to certain Plains Indian tribes practice of counting coup. [Disclaimer: I am certainly no authority on Plains Indian culture, so if I'm wrong, y'all feel free to correct me.] The basic draw is the same....strike a blow against the enemy, die and your name and "bravery" will live on forever....and you'll be amply rewarded in the afterlife. Not hard to understand the allure for people whose life sucks anyway or who are religious zealots. After a certain point, you start running out of effective participants.
That's one of the two problems with this battle strategy. After you run through zealots and the dispossessed, it's difficult to attract new converts. I mean, "Join our cause and die" doesn't sound particularly attractive to most ordinary people. The other problem is that it's only effective against an enemy not willing to sustain the relatively few losses this method can impose.
The terrorists watch CNN and the BBC and, understandably, they figure that in Iraq the United States, Britain, the United Nations and all the rest will do what most people do when they run up against someone deranged: Back out of the room slowly. They're wrong. There's no choice. You kill it here, or the next generation of suicide bombers will be on buses in Rotterdam, Manchester, Lyons, and blowing up the U.N. Building in Manhattan. This is the battlefield.
Precisely. There is no peaceful coexistence with this particular ideology. Cut 'em if they stand and shoot 'em if they run....or die yourself.
And the sooner we all understand this and act accordingly, the sooner this world war will end.
Posted by Rita at August 25, 2003 06:19 AM
Comments
Counting coup is a style thing, run in touch the enemy and get away, impresses the ladies. there was a form of defiance where a warrior would drive a stake into the ground, lash his leg to itand make his last stand there-a version of Stalin's, "Not one step backwards"
Posted by: Old Fat Sailor at August 25, 2003 07:14 AM
Thanks, Rob. So it was more a form of grandstanding than suicidal battle tactic? Still seems awfully counterproductive against a more technically advanced foe.
Posted by: Rita at August 25, 2003 07:54 AM
It was also a matter of honor... and both the coup counter and counted believed in the system... it was a way to say, "I could have killed you, but I dishonored you by leaving you alive. I am a better man than you."
A warrior who counted coup on another warrior believed that he owned that man's life. More importantly, the other warrior believed it too, and honored the debt.
Southern African tribes had a similiar tradition before Shaka Zulu. They would pose and dance and sing... the group that chickened out lost the battle. Shaka Zulu changed that with a no-holds-barred style of fighting that resembled roman tactics with a surrounding pincer movement and a new, short iron spear.
Both groups failed to recognize the huge difference in confronting a modern, industrialized culture. We have a different idea of honor and dishonor.
Really nice people, folks who went to church and loved their families once said, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."
Radical Muslims should look at where both the Plains Indians and the Zulu ended up...
Posted by: Mike S at August 25, 2003 07:10 PM