There is a certain misguided sort of bravery in being a suicide bomber. Let’s be honest about it … you have to be willing to hit a switch that is going to kill you. The real evil of suicide bombing isn’t so much the tactic as it is the targets — school buses, food markets, and that sort of thing.
Al-Qaeda, though, has begun to grow beyond the need for men and women who are willing to kill themselves for their cause. They’ll use the ones who can’t understand, too.
Two women with Down’s syndrome, probably unaware of what they were doing, were used to carry out bombing attacks in Iraq. The people who brainwash others into committing suicide attacks represent a rare form of evil. The monsters who send them out to blow up women, children, and other civilians are a step beyond that.
Anyone who would look at women with a mental disability and figure that they’d make a good weapon delivery system … I don’t use the only kinds of words that come to mind. I don’t know words strong enough to express my revulsion. (And, no, I’m not asking for help.)
There is nothing that can be pretended is noble in this kind of attack.
This, by the way, is the kind of monster person (to use the term loosely) that we are trying to stop with the war on terror. Call it a bumper sticker slogan if you want, but there are people without conscience who want nothing more than to kill lots of their enemies — and will do anything to make that happen.
There is one spot of good news in this story, but it took my a long time to see it.
Why, after years of having young men kill themselves to go find their “reward,” have the terrorists moved to this new style? Is there, perhaps, a shortage of young men willing to strap on suicide vests to blow up women in open-air markets? Have the recruiting efforts not gone so well?
I don’t know positive answers to these questions, and if the government does, I’m sure that they’re classified.
Still, I’d like to think that there is some cause for optimism in this story. On its surface, it is certainly nothing positive.
February 4, 2008 at 6:03 pm
There is a certain misguided sort of bravery in being a suicide bomber. Let’s be honest about it … you have to be willing to hit a switch that is going to kill you. The real evil of suicide bombing isn’t so much the tactic as it is the targets — school buses, food markets, and that sort of thing.
This is the most sensible thing I’ve read all day. Thanks.
February 11, 2008 at 10:09 am
Having two children with Down Syndrome, this story infuriates me and breaks my heart. It isn’t enough for folks to abort such “defective” babies, now they feel they have to right to casually “dispose” of them in the name of a “greater cause”.
February 11, 2008 at 3:52 pm
I can’t imagine how anyone thinks that this is a good idea.
And how anyone thinks that any god worth honoring takes delight in this, I can’t imagine. I’ve known a couple people with Down syndrome, and they’ve been the sweetest, happiest, most wonderful people I’ve been blessed to know. (Easter Seals had a camp that ran in cooperation with the Boy Scout camp where I worked for two summers.) Wonderful, wonderful kids …
September 13, 2008 at 6:37 am
[...] to draw any connections between this Dr. Lalonde’s view of children with Down Syndrome and this other pro-death cult’s view of Down [...]