Monday, August 08, 2005

Psychology of Suicide Bombers

Everyone knows suicide bombers are mentally unbalanced religious fanatics. Everyone, that is, that has never made any serious study of the phenomenon of suicide bombing. Those who have generally know (as has been well known among experts for many years) that suicide bombers are generally not crazy, and that they are more commonly motivated by other concerns - nationalism, personal revenge, family honor - than religion.

This article is one of the few treatments of the subject I've seen in the US media. It's an interesting report. There is one snippet at the end that's especially interesting:


"Through much of the Muslim world, and even some of Europe," McCauley said, "it's believed that the embargo on Saddam Hussein's Iraq caused the deaths of several hundred thousand people, most of them children, from bad water, untreated sewage, lack of proper medical care."


How did "the Muslim world, and even some of Europe" come to believe such nonsense? Well, actually, this fact is well known in the US as well, among people who follow US foreign policy closely. It is not a secret, it's just not discussed.

Actually, I'm being much too hard on the American media, and much too easy on Americans generally, to say that the fact of several hundred thousand children's deaths is "not discussed." In fact it was discussed on national television in 1996. Here's Leslie Stahl interviewing Madeline Albright:


Lesley Stahl: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.


To the extent that Americans do not know that our embargo on Iraq resulted in the deaths of several hundred thousand children, it is a willful ignorance. We choose not to know. But what you choose not to know can hurt you, if you ignore it long enough.

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