ex-radical

W. Kiernan wkiernan at ij.net
Fri Feb 7 18:41:02 PST 2003


Dennis Perrin wrote:
>
> > But, moreover, using certain
> > vocabulary comes with a certain ideological apparatus.
> > If I referred, in the old days, to the "captive
> > nations," you'd think I was a right wing cold warrior.
> > jks
>
> I can see a distinction being made if, say, we were talking about a
> contra army being called "freedom fighters." That's an ideological
> tag. The homicide/suicide bombers are committing homicide and
> suicide. That's a fact. You can hail it or condemn it, but the fact
> remains.

In fact I do condemn it. Generally, that is, but not always. For example I consider that U.S. pilot who drove his fighter-bomber right down the smokestack of that Japanese warship during the battle of Midway to be a hero.

The thing is, pretty much _all_ bombers are homicidal. What else do you do with bombs besides kill people? To refer to someone as a "suicide bomber" is like referring to a "truck bomber" or a "letter bomber" or a "dynamite bomber," merely a clarification of precisely how the killer deployed his bomb. Whereas to refer to a bomber who happens to have walked his bomb to the target on his own person as a "homicide bomber" is akin to talking about "gaseous air" or "damp water."

If the Palestinian swine who walks a bomb into an Israeli bus is a "homicide bomber," then equally so the Israeli swine who releases a laser-guided bomb from his F-16 onto an apartment building chock-full of innocent civilians at two in the morning is a "homicide bomber." The principal difference being, for what little it's worth, that the second criminal doesn't demonstrate half the same courage and/or desperation as the first. However it's worth noting that those halfwits who habitually employ that imbecilically redundant phrase always neglect to describe that second mass-murderer with the same term.

Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net



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