Marc Estrin

SUICIDE BOMBING, ANYONE?

October 26, 2005

Many suicide bombers in Iraq. Today, another one in Israel. There recently showed up on my computer screen an article by a Palestinian writer entitled “Why We Have Become Suicide Bombers”, which feelingly narrated a long history of oppression and frustration leading some Palestinians to ultimate despair. It strikes me that an article with the same title might now be written by an American.

So—before the “why”, the “that”: We are currently slaughtering many innocent civilians. More than 100,000 as of November ‘04, according to the British Medical Journal, The Lancet. Plus we bomb their crops, their water supplies, bridges, roads and communications.

We have been doing that for many years, most recently in Grenada, Lebanon, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iran, Panama, Iraq, Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and Colombia. And now Iraq again, and soon, who knows, Syria or Iran. More, bigger, better. The President promises a broad, sweeping and sustained campaign, against terror (!), and you may be sure that neither the Pentagon nor the record books will lack for megatonnage when our troops run out. “Bomb ‘em back to the stone age” is a directive I hear again on the streets. “Put up a parking lot.”

That these past and current bombings, and the bombings to be, are suicide bombings is equally clear. Ours is a slow-ish suicide, a suicide-by-parts, but a suicide nonetheless. Death accrues by misallocation of resources, and the domestic despair and mistrust that result. It seeps in with the poisoning of our environment, both by toxic wastes produced, and those we can “not afford” to clean up—not to mention the ideological poisoning which will cause the upcoming global deaths, and the celebration of them here at home. And most dramatically, our past, present and future actions are a certain investment in more acts against Americans. One by one, or ten thousand at a blow, we are asking for it. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…

All right—we are suicide bombers. But why? What drives a people to such despair that they feel forced to strike out against innocents and themselves? Einstein once commented: “Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed.” That’s a good place to start.

America’s stupidity is not a natural one, but has been carefully cultivated, especially over the last century. We are taught little history or geography; we speak few foreign languages, our information has become infotainment. All this pays off grandly in creating a nation filled with contented consumers, satisfied with the status quo, and unlikely to practice any “excess of democracy” such as aggressive voting, or turning out a government-in-question.

Greed, too, has been well-taught by a complex history of open land, “manifest destiny”, racism and a sense of exceptionality: If stupidity clouds the realms of feedback, there is no natural check on self-aggrandizement.

Fear, is a natural consequence of even a glancing sense of unbalance. THEY want to take away our goodies. We’d better spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined. Oh, and missile defense, too. And weaponize space, just in case.

Stupidity, fear and greed—combined with great wealth and power—must ultimately lead to the semi-conscious despair we are now experiencing. Our children are shooting one another. They no longer believe they will have jobs. They are taking to the streets to be gassed and shot at. Their parents just want to “get through this, and leave the problems to them,” as I heard one suit say to another. Suicide bombing, why not?

Like all apocalyptic action, this has its religious dimension. Our leaders intone the credo: we will rid the world of evil, of the Great Satan—them. Our fresh-faced bombers—alive and dead—are the heroes and martyrs praised by the bunkers of elders and priests, ecumenically, in the names of God and Mammon. They now number 2,001.