They never survive to suffer the vengence of earthly justice. They flee the jursidiction, their souls interloping within that great groan of expiring life that they have made their last will and testament. But their thuds are not the only throbbing bass beats in this Great American Requiem. For so too have our soldiers caused the mass evaporation of innocent life. Yet, we abjure the bombers and absolve our soldiers. Who claims the higher the moral ground? The soldier who by definition, must stand to proclaim, "I kill, therefore I am", or the suicide bomber, who also, must fall to proclaim "I kill, therefore I am not."?

We are told that our soldiers are not "terrorists". In an Salon.com interview with "international terrorism consultant" Evan Kohlmann ( http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/02/insurgency/), "Terrorists are people who set off bombs in marketplaces and deliberately kill innocent civilians for no good reason. Any suicide bombing is a terrorist act. It's not an insurgent act. There is no military objective in it. The vast majority of suicide bombings that take place in Iraq are either the work of al-Qaida or al-Qaida-linked groups. Al-Qaida are the terrorists." What distinguishes the killing of "innocents" by our troops from that of the "terrorists" is that it is that it is perceived by us as being done "intentionally" for no "good" reason.

Who are the true "innocents" in this war? At one extreme, all those not wearing military uniforms and/or bearing arms are innocent, hence all civillians, and "any widespread or systematic" attack" (http://www.icc-cpi.int/library/about/officialjournal/Rome_Statute_120704-EN.pdf) involving their murder is deemed a war crime. At the other, no one is innocent, not even children, hence the "Mini Eichmanns" commentary of a Ward Churchill. Most would agree that wearing a military or para-military uniform and bearing an arm constitutes one as a legitimate target in a time of war. Thus military strikes and suicide bomb attacks against military installations, police stations, recruitment centers, training camps, checkpoints, and their personnel do not involve the murder of innocents, and are therefore not definitionally "terrorist" attacks. So too would most agree that attacks targetting children do involve the loss of innocent life, and the Beslan School Trajedy would be as pure a "terrorist" act as could be. Where between the men with guns and the children with toys does innocence end? Eichmann was a bureaucrat who did not hurt a fly, who yet with his train schedules was as guilty as the SS guard prodding grandmothers into gas chambers. And so, direct enablers of the men with guns may also be guilty, and thus worthy targets. Our miltary strikes and their suicide bomb attacks against hostile governments, their infrastructure and personnel are deemed legitimate during a time of war. But with each step back from the men with guns, we near the children. Industrial slave workers who fill the artillery shells and weld the tanks constitute legitimate targets. Those who mine the iron ore and aluminum during a time of war are also culpable. To ask how guilty are the enablers of the enablers would be akin to asking when is a boy a man, an ill person to be left for dead. It can never with certainty be known, though a dead man certainly can. So, the suicide bomber's attack in a marketplace or a university quad is undoubtedly the killing of innocents. And the wholesale bombing of defenceless residential areas is also the killing of innocents upon a far grander scale: "terrorism" writ large, as in Fallujah or this week's artillery salvoes into southern Baghdad. So both the suicide bomber and our soldiers share the ineluctable trajedy of killing innocents.

But does the suicide bomber share her intentionality with that of the soldier who also exterminates life? What principle differientiates the blasted Baghdad shopper from the burned babysitter of Fallujah? What makes one a victim and the other "collateral", not death, but "damage"? The Pentagon takes great pain to make the distinction, for how else to justify killing innocent people? It is argued that be it the 50,000 of Hiroshima or 5,000 of Fallujah, the much-deplored mass death arose as an unintended side effect to a military objective. Here lies the fundamental exculpation of our soldiers: they may kill all to kill the One, whereas the suicide bomber simply wished to kill all. Who is the more honest, and therefore the more honorable? Where lies the merit that because there is only a 50% chance of killing ten people to kill the enemy, I am innocent of intending their deaths versus the suicide bomber who kills with 100% certainty. Especially if I attack not once, but twice, or indeed, a hundred times. The heap of bodybags from suicide bombings in Iraq is but a molehill to the mountain of our soldiers. Yet by accepting this toll as mere collateral damage, perhaps we avoid the infamy of pure murder for our soldiers, but so too, must we dismiss the charge of mere murderer for the suicide bomber.

In further amelioration of our soldiers' guilt for the innocent dead, blame is affixed to the enemy, they who "hide" amongst the innocent, they who would shield themselves from our bullets, our white phospohorus, and cluster bombs with the bodies of babies. The definition of "war crimes" under the constituting Statute of Rome for the new International Criminal Oourt includes the crime of "utilizing the presence of a civillian to render ...forces immune from military attack." The presence of civillians does ideally ought to render the enemy immune from military attack. Yes, a man would be guilty of murder by placing a baby between himself and a charging bull. But our soldiers are not charging bulls, they are as equally compelled by the commands of their officers as by the edicts of their God. And so the collateral deaths of our soldiers and the victims of the suicide bomber merge and both share a common intention to murder their way for their own "good" reasons.

The final charge in our indictment of the suicide bomber is that she kills for no "good" reason, for "no military objective". Per pound of explosive, it is a horrifying reality that the suicide bomber who kills 40 innocent young people in a schoolyard, has a far greater effect upon the psyche of the enemy and his will to resist than a large scale air strike. And the impact is further magnified by a mass media that will replay without remorse the scenes of bloody carnage and the laments of mothers, ad nauseum, all in the name of selling toothpaste. If their suicide tapes can be believed, and surely one's impending death compells utter truthfulness, their stated objective is the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. As documented by Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chaicago, "Dying to Win", http://www.opendemocracy.net/xml/xhtml/articles/3836.html), suicide campaigns are mostly successful, and modern Western democracies are specially vulnerable.

This is not a justification or glorification of the suicide bomber, nor intended as an indictment of our troops as mere murderers. They are both nothing more nor less than simple soldiers, who kill on command. But in the suicide bomber we must recognize one aspect of soldiery that renders them the superior fighter: self-sacrifice. They kill, and they are not. Here's lies the chilling augury of our own defeat in Afghanistan: they will kill and die rather than live with us, whereas we would simply kill and retreat rather than live with them.

The true blame lies with their masters, be they in Tehran or Washington, DC.

[ 03 March 2007: Message edited by: Neocynic ]

[ 03 March 2007: Message edited by: Neocynic ]

[ 03 March 2007: Message edited by: Neocynic ]