Comment by danbruc 10 months ago
Suicide bombers at least really have skin in the game compared to blowing up people half way around the world by drones at the press of a button. If you want to look down on people, then do it for their reasons to fight or the targets they pick, not for their choice of weapon.
Because you were only talking about martyrdom and suicide bombing which is a choice of weapon, there is not a single word relating to choice of target in your comment. One could maybe see some implicit hint at the choice of target as suicide bombings are most effective and mostly used for a specific kind of targets and they are often pretty indiscriminate attacks. But as you can target more or less the same targets with non-suicide bombings as with suicide bombings and you were specifically talking about suicide bombings and not bombings in general, this is not something that you should expect people to take away from your comment.
By the way, I am not sure you understood necessity in the way I wanted it understood. I wanted to say what if they target civilians because they do not have the means to effectively target the military, i.e. if it is necessary to target civilians in order to have any impact at all. And you can target civilians in various ways, so martyrdom and suicide bombings are not necessary. It is, I would assume, however true that martyrdom and certain religious views about an afterlife make suicide bombings a much more viable weapon than otherwise.
I intentionally did not say Palestin and Israel, I really meant it in general, could actions that would easily be labeled as terrorism be justified? What if you are too weak to fight the military of an occupying power, should you just give up and accept? Or might targeting civilians be a justifiable option, hoping that this will change the politics and lead to the end of the occupation? Note that I am not saying that you should never give up, when you are fighting a loosing battle, that might just be your best option, even if that option sucks. I am also not saying that targeting civilians is the way to go, they might just double down and make you suffer more. And none of this is meant to be to specifically about the Arab–Israeli conflict, even though it fits the scenario I described.
It’s the choice of target, rather than the weapon that makes me look down on them. Aiming to blow up bystanders is disgusting, not sure how you made this be about "choice of weapon".