andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
>
> Just a question for the curious: do you think
> "martyrdom" or suicide bombing, whatever you want to
> call it, is a morally acceptable and/or politically
> prudent method of struggle?
> jks
>
No, of course not. In any struggle in which there is any hope of victory, such a tactic is both wrong and counter-productive.
But what _do_ you do when there is no hope?
And how does a suicide bomber in an occupied territory compare/contrast to the Roger Young of the song who deliberately exposed himself to enemy fire that the enemy could be killed and his comrades survive?
Everyone (or almost everyone) wants to reduce the case of the suicide bombers to a simply yes/no. Is that possible?
Also (leaving aside for a minute the practical needs of agitation: I would not be writing this post on the local anti-war list-serve), what is gained/lost by people taking a purely verbal position of approval/disapproval of a situation on which they can have no effect? There will not be a single life either saved or lost by my abstract moral judgment of a suicide bomber on the West Bank.
There are some on this list who believe that one is corrupted forever by admiring a paragraph in WITBD or _Two Tactics_. There was a poster on the original Lenin list who believed that one was corrupted forever if one's posts consisted of anything else but unalloyed praise of Stalin. What difference do such abstractly affirmed or denied states of mind make?
Carrol
P.S. What kind of conversation re Palestine would be occurring on this list had there never been a suicide bomber?