Suicide Bombers

From time to time someone suggests that the term "suicide bomber" is inaccurate and suggests something else. There is an ongoing debate as to whether the term "terrorist" is unfair and biased, because "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," as assinine a statement as I've ever heard. Terrorism is the attempt of a group without the numbers or weaponry to conduct normal warfare to achieve political goals by committing violent atrocities against civilians and non-combatants. How is this a biased term? Or does Reuters or the BBC mean to suggest that terrorism is a valid way to fight a war?

Some might say that General Sherman's march through Georgia and the Carolinas was terrorism, but it wasn't. He did not kill civilians or even fight battles unless there was an army opposing him. I suppose that the firebombing of northern German cities in WWII or the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, could be called a form of terrorism, especially the former which seems to have been driven by the British demand for vengeance for the earlier bombing of London by the Nazis, earlier. In any event, these examples were part of a declared war and served a purpose of bringing the war home to the populations of the countries which began the war, and may have saved lives by breaking the will of the enemy to continue to fight.

Terrorism is conducted, not for any effective military reason, but merely to incite fear among the citizens of a country you don't have the military strength to fight in the open. It's tied to publicity as well. It has its own logic, and sometimes it works, as in the case of the Madrid bombings. Anybody who thinks about it, should realize that, like hostage taking, you can't really make peace with terrorists. Giving in to their demands rewards their tactics and invites more of the same.

As for the Palestinian and other "martyrs," I would adopt the term "Palestinian Land Mines" or "PLMs." The reason is that it expresses the way these foolish young people are used by those who recruit them and illustrates how they have been depersonalized by the architects of terrorism. It also indicates that the causes that motivate these people can't or won't promise them anything to look forward to. They don't do this for freedom or democracy. They blow themselves up in order to kill people they don't know, merely because they are Jews or Non-Muslims, in the belief that doing so will earn them a privileged place in the afterlife. Every religion has had martyrs, but real martyrs earn that status by standing up for their beliefs even in the face of death, not by murdering others, but by accepting death rather than deny their faith. The doctrine of Takia in Islam excuses any believer for lying in order to escape persecution. A true martyr seals his testimony with his blood. A person who kills himself in an attack on unsuspecting non-combatants isn't testifying to anything except the emptiness of his life and faith.