Exporting democracy

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

Ok, square that with the education and accomplishments of the 9/11 hijackers. They weren't poor derelicts being mislead by manipulative mullahs.

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Nobody said that everybody who wants to kill themselves and others around them has to be poor and ill-educated. But consider the baying mobs one sees on one's nightly news programme; can it really be the case that there are so many people hell-bent on killing infidels? Or is it more likely that there are a few hard-core types and a lot of people who are easily led?

After all, one might say that in the West there could be a few hard-core media types who decide what to show us on TV, and the rest of us are easily led into believing that a billion barbaric Muslims want to rampage across America.

Or millions of baying "Christians" protesting abortion clinics, the teaching of evolution etc. Or millions of citizens celebrating the war against Iraq - how must that look in the middle east - much the same as it looks from ourside looking at them.....

At one point, somebody criticized Falwells Moral Majority by calling them "Poor, uneducated, and easily led." Those morons put the phrase on buttons and wore it proudly. Some people are immune to insult.

This is much like that test that was preformed to show how easy it was for the nazi's to commit genocide. They made a person ask another a series of questions. If they got a question wrong the asker would eletrocute the subject in increassing voltages. If they were unhappy with what they were doing they were simple told to carry on.... and they did. The test showed that 50% of people would administer a lethal dose of electricity simply because they were asked to by someone they belived to be in a position of power and/or authority. This is no different to suicide bombers. It is irrelivent to speak about the fact that they may or may not be educated. They are simply following orders much like he nazi's did.

I am aware of that study, but it is my understanding that the Israelis have studied suicide bombings, and their results don't agree with your statements. I have heard that their findings were that the bombers were not just following orders, but were ideologically motivated, with the exact ideology not being ignorant brainwashing, but a far more complicated societal expectation.

Interestingly, you can find the same motivation in American literature, so as much as we reject what we see in palestinian suicide bombers, we also celebrate the exact same motivation in our own culture. One example would be the ending of Steven King's Marathon Man. The movie was a typical Hollywood bastardization, but in the original story, the protaganist, legally hunted as a form of sport combined with death sentence, kills himself by deliberately flying a plane into the office of the head of the agency that administers the hunt. Since the agency head is acting legally at the behest of society, the protaganist becomes the same as the 911 hijackers. He felt that he was doing the right thing for good reasons. Not brainwashed, just willing to give his life for a cause that involved the deliberate killing of a law abiding citizen.

There are plenty more examples of this view in literature (not so many in movies, as the happy ending isn't there). As a culture, we actually understand what would motivate a person to give their lives to hurt an enemy, we just have a hard time seeing how we could be cast in the role of the enemy. Another example would be the movie Unforgiven, where the protaganist rides into town to kill the sheriff and all the lawmen in town. Of course, we have seen the world from his eyes, and believe the lawmen have done bad things, but what did the law do that provoked such a reaction? They killed a man who had taken cash to murder two people, one of whom was involved with an assualt. Furthermore, the man died inadvertently during a harsh interrogation.

It's not just that we understand the terrorists, we celebrate the concepts behind their actions, but we feel indignant when the actions are taken against us.