[lbo-talk] FW: Suicide as a tactic

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Tue Jan 13 08:03:17 PST 2004


Hari:
> Perhaps we may be at cross-purposes here. You may be talking (mainly ?
only?) about the
> situation of the assaults on say, Israel, or on the USA occupiers. I
think it is moot there - at
> least that is my view. However, the Turkish movement has had much
intense soul-searching
> about this strategy. Other than one grouping, which maintains its'
insistence that this is the
> right strategy (& in fact as far as I am aware - within the country -
does very little else on
> the ground) many inside the Turkish movement have concluded that the
time has come not
> give its best sons & daughters to the Turkish ruling class gratis.

WS: I think that is an altogether different topic. I was considering the situation strictly from a military commander's point of view, whose job is not to ponder whether the war is just, moral, or for the right cause, but to accomplish a mission against enemy forces (whoever they may be) while keeping his own losses to the minimum. From that point of view, a suicide mission minimizes own losses quite substantially, for if the same objective were to be achieved through the convention means, i.e. a military unit shooting its way through the enemy lines to blow up a target - the own losses would be quite substantial. If I remember correctly, one estimate I saw was that an average loss (dead or wounded) is about 80% of the assault force.

As to the question whether it is right to "give best sons & daughters" to the enemy, be it in a suicide or a conventional mission, my own thinking is that this is almost never a good option because in the end everybody looses. I would argue that a peaceful solution is almost always preferable. But then again, I do not think that the establishment of a sovereign nation-state is always a good thing worth fighting for.

Wojtek



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list