Terrorism is not new. It's been practiced since the beginning of time. Planned actions against an enemy that anticipate and in fact require the death of the person or persons making the attack including the current suicide bombings are not new. Suicide bombings are typically common when one side in a violent conflict lacks the means for effective, conventional attacks, but are not limited to that condition. Our own troops have committed suicide attacks in warfare, and so have the Japanese and other nation's defenders.
During the Second World War Japanese kamikaze pilots and those who manned human guided torpedoes sank many ships during the Second World War resulting in a large loss of American life and warships. While Muslim suicide attacks are more numerous, frequent and media grabbing they are not necessarily more deadly.
Muslim terrorist organizations are also not new but they have increased in size and activity in the last century and are now being directed outside the Middle East. The mid-eastern nations have always been at war with one another, tribe against tribe and one religious sect against another, one of the most lasting and deadly being the Shiia Muslims against the Sunni.
The Sunnis and Shiias are fractionalized into disparate groups who violently disagree with one another. The Shiia for centuries have fought against the Sunni because the Shiia believe all Muslim leaders must be blood descendants of Muhammad or they are not legitimate. This disagreement resulted in the massacre of Muhammad’s grandson Hussein and family, direct descendents of Muhammad the prophet, which occurred in 680 CE. That blood fight has never been resolved. It was the Sunni faction that murdered the grandson of Muhammad and set off this war that has no end. There are a host of other internal Muslim disputes that divide these factions.
The Muslim religion as taught by the prophet Mohammed was very tolerant of other faiths, included women on an equal basis with men, and believed in peace and justice. It is the endless fighting and struggle for power within the Muslim world and the attempts at colonialism by the British and the US that have produced the Muslim militancy and terrorism that has upset our world.
It was the British whose reckless quest of empire arbitrarily drew lines demarking the present state of Iraq including the Kurds, some Turks, the Sunnis and Shiites along with other sects. Saddam Hussein, although a ruthless dictator, kept a cap on these feuding tribes and religious sects and his removal knocked the lid of the kettle allowing it to boil over.
Then there is the problem of the advance of technology. It’s current technology that allows for explosives to be strapped to suicide bombers and for the planting of radio activated Improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s) and this popular method of terrorism will not go away soon. This practice will grow in popularity and spread to other nations unless technology can somehow answer with a counter technology that will allow for satellite or other means of early detection of these explosives and circumvention of the detonating devices. However, that technological advance in itself would likely bode ill will for personal freedoms and public counter measures to tyranny worldwide - equivalent to disarming citizens of personal firearms here in the US. When the public is denied access to any form of weapons to defend themselves they will become even greater victims of those who control weapons technology.
No matter how you spin it, the world is in for major depression of human rights, rights to assemble, free speech, etc. Technology, long considered a salvation for the human race may well become its destruction.
Gary
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