Understanding Suicide Bombers and "Terrorists" through an Emphatic Experiment

[Omega]

Cannot Americans understand that our invading and occupying of countries understandably is the most effective way of creating enemies?

Put yourself in in the shoes of an Iraqi or Afghan father the night before the US invasion: You wake to the sound of bombs falling on your own city and to your entire neighborhood in rubble. You survive, are dazed, hurt, but you get up frantically to see if your family and neighbors survived. You search to the rubble but only find unrecognizably dismembered parts of people you care for. Mostly everyone you care for is dead. You spend the next hours in an daze and shuffling between deep feelings of anger, mourning and frustration. You contemplate killing yourself and whether your life has any meaning left. But then the people responsible for killing your family - US troops - will land shortly in your country and begin to set up a permanent base.

Would you be able to somehow restrain yourself from seeking to avenge your family by killing as many US soldiers as you possibly can?

Now imagine that instead of Afghanistan or Iraq being bombed, let's say that whichever American city you live in is suddenly bombed and occupied by a hypothetically infinitely stronger military power. You wake to find the dismembered body parts of your family strewn across streets and rubble. Wouldn't you do all you can do to avenge the death of your family?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUEGHdQO7WA&feature=channel_video_title

[Dark Castle]

Eh....sorry but that's a pretty scripted scenario, and if I found my family killed by a higher military force, I'd fight back with other weaponry, I wouldn't just blow myself up, that doesn't even guarantee any deaths.

[El Barto]

Eh....sorry but that's a pretty scripted scenario, and if I found my family killed by a higher military force, I'd fight back with other weaponry, I wouldn't just blow myself up, that doesn't even guarantee any deaths.

Indeed it is,  but the underlying premise is still sound.  We create enemies by our actions,  and some of those enemies have nothing better to do than blow themselves up.  I agree that finding a better way to fight would be preferable,  but given that neither you nor I have a viable means of attacking some kid pressing buttons from 350' below the Arabian Sea,  you seek other means. 

[jsem]

I think I posted this one a few months back. It's common sense, it's necessary to understand the supposed enemy to engage in proper foreign policy.

[Progmetty]

if I found my family killed by a higher military force, I'd fight back with other weaponry

What other weaponry do you think they have? It's either blow themselves up or throw rocks at the enemy soldiers and hope they don't turn you into a mesh screen before you run away.

[Dark Castle]

if I found my family killed by a higher military force, I'd fight back with other weaponry

What other weaponry do you think they have? It's either blow themselves up or throw rocks at the enemy soldiers and hope they don't turn you into a mesh screen before you run away.

If they can make explosives, use them effectively, blowing themselves up isn't effective.

[Super Dude]

I think I posted this one a few months back. It's common sense, it's necessary to understand the supposed enemy to engage in proper foreign policy.

Yeah, it was posted actually almost a year ago. A big thank you to whoever did post this originally, I was able to use it in an American foreign policy paper that I ended up getting a 93% on.

[Scheavo]

if I found my family killed by a higher military force, I'd fight back with other weaponry

What other weaponry do you think they have? It's either blow themselves up or throw rocks at the enemy soldiers and hope they don't turn you into a mesh screen before you run away.

If they can make explosives, use them effectively, blowing themselves up isn't effective.

The suicide aspect is going to be more cultural / religious, there have been numerous societies in history that have accepted and even praised forms of suicide.

[Dark Castle]

if I found my family killed by a higher military force, I'd fight back with other weaponry

What other weaponry do you think they have? It's either blow themselves up or throw rocks at the enemy soldiers and hope they don't turn you into a mesh screen before you run away.

If they can make explosives, use them effectively, blowing themselves up isn't effective.

The suicide aspect is going to be more cultural / religious, there have been numerous societies in history that have accepted and even praised forms of suicide.

I'm going entirely from a logical standpoint.

[Super Dude]

Logical from our point of view.

[Scheavo]

if I found my family killed by a higher military force, I'd fight back with other weaponry

What other weaponry do you think they have? It's either blow themselves up or throw rocks at the enemy soldiers and hope they don't turn you into a mesh screen before you run away.

If they can make explosives, use them effectively, blowing themselves up isn't effective.

The suicide aspect is going to be more cultural / religious, there have been numerous societies in history that have accepted and even praised forms of suicide.

I'm going entirely from a logical standpoint.

And I'm not saying I morally disagree with you. I'm just pointing out that what you perceive as logical, may not be what someone else perceives as logical, or even be logical for them. It's all very beside the point, anyways.

[Dark Castle]

if I found my family killed by a higher military force, I'd fight back with other weaponry

What other weaponry do you think they have? It's either blow themselves up or throw rocks at the enemy soldiers and hope they don't turn you into a mesh screen before you run away.

If they can make explosives, use them effectively, blowing themselves up isn't effective.

The suicide aspect is going to be more cultural / religious, there have been numerous societies in history that have accepted and even praised forms of suicide.

I'm going entirely from a logical standpoint.

And I'm not saying I morally disagree with you. I'm just pointing out that what you perceive as logical, may not be what someone else perceives as logical, or even be logical for them. It's all very beside the point, anyways.

fair enough 

[Super Dude]

A good book for that very question: The fallacies of Cold War deterrence and a new direction by Keith B. Payne

It sometimes goes a little overboard in the right-winged jingoism department, but all in all he's got the right idea.

[El Barto]

if I found my family killed by a higher military force, I'd fight back with other weaponry

What other weaponry do you think they have? It's either blow themselves up or throw rocks at the enemy soldiers and hope they don't turn you into a mesh screen before you run away.

If they can make explosives, use them effectively, blowing themselves up isn't effective.

.
Actually,  it's often quite effective.  A bomb is a bomb,  but without a good method of delivery,  it's not particularly useful.  Having a person on hand to insure it goes off when and where it's supposed to is pretty damned useful.  The problem is that you're compelled to use nobody's,  rather than sharp and skilled bombers.  Occasionally they drop the ball. 

[Progmetty]

if I found my family killed by a higher military force, I'd fight back with other weaponry

What other weaponry do you think they have? It's either blow themselves up or throw rocks at the enemy soldiers and hope they don't turn you into a mesh screen before you run away.

If they can make explosives, use them effectively, blowing themselves up isn't effective.

The suicide aspect is going to be more cultural / religious, there have been numerous societies in history that have accepted and even praised forms of suicide.

This is definitely a common misconception. There's nothing about suicide in neither their culture or the religion, at least in the Arabic Muslim case, there's fight the offenders til death but that's different.
I frankly think that if you don't understand suicide bombers than you couldn't put yourself in their shoes. I completely understand that if my other option was to give up then I might as well do any kind of damage no matter how minor it was and at least make some headlines to voice the existence of desperation in this place.