The Suicide Bombers: The Sacred and the Profane

Published on August 27, 2005

Reconciliation between the Anglo-American and Islamic and Arab people can be achieved through a war crimes tribunal, similar to the Nuremburg Trials after the Second World War. The practitioners and proponents of crimes against humanity beginning with the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Great Britain should be brought to trial and accorded exemplary punishment to prevent recidivism.

By James Petras
Posted by Bulatlat

Introduction

One of the least discussed but most important aspect of the ‘suicide bombers’ (SB) attacks is the Angle-American (AA) systematic and profound degradation of that which the Islamic religion holds most sacred: its code of ethics, its mode of spiritual practice, its religious rituals, its sacred texts and its respect for the observant believer.

The neo-conservative, liberal and pro-Israel propagandists, both journalists and academics focus on what they choose to call the “pathologies” of young Muslims, the fanaticism of their beliefs, their gratuitous violence, the “generational anger”, the “frustration” of living in “failed states” and a long litany of irrational behaviors which exonerates the AA and Israeli violence and torture.

A progressive school of thought emphasizes the “reciprocal nature of violence” – Anglo-American wars, invasions and occupations which engender Arab or Islamic terror as part of a spiral of violence. In some versions – the religious element is subordinated to the political concern for self-determination in explaining the behavior of SB.

While the latter approach has the advantage of advancing beyond the vitriolic psychobabble of the neoconservative and Zionists “experts” of the “Arab Mind”, it fails to account for the depth and scope of the suicide bomber phenomena, especially the sharpening intensity during the occupation.

Beyond the general mayhem induced by Anglo-American wars, invasions and occupations, there are two forms of violence derivative from the general conception of war, which stand out as the direct determinants of suicide bombing.

The AA have theorized and put in practice the idea of “total war” – a war without legal, moral, geographic, temporal or spatial boundaries. As Bush, Rumsfeld and the Pentagon Zionists (Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith and Company) declared, this is a different war in which the “enemy” is everywhere and attacking at all times. The final solution is to search and destroy them, their sanctuaries, their accomplices, their neighborhoods, families, religious institutions and any who might offer material or spiritual support, protection or encouragement. The theory and practice of “total war” obliterates the distinction between combatants and civilians, between military installations and civilian facilities, between military infrastructure and civilian transports systems, between the sacred and the profane.

The AA have imposed new norms of warfare and new practices for engaging the enemy which have been increasingly taken up by sectors of their adversaries. If AA imperialism can act with unrestrained violence against all military and civilian targets, so can the resistance – including the suicide bombers – whether they are Islamists or secular, poor or middle class. What determine the reaction of the adversaries of AA imperialism are their rules of warfare – the notion of “total war.”

Total war: Content and consequences

There are different forms of imperial conquest. In one variant the purpose is to work through local elites who become the tribute collectors and gendarmes of the colonial powers, which gain control of the agro-mineral wealth and finance their privileged position via local taxes.

In another variant, the imperial powers destroy the pre-existing society and governing system, frequently uprooting the population and in the process physically annihilate its members and culture in the course of seizing its wealth. The degradation of the sacred is a prelude to attempts to impose a new set of beliefs more conducive to submission and exploitation.

A third variant is a combination or a sequential process of destruction, degradation and exploitation followed by efforts to “reconstruct” a colonized military, police and political structure willing and able to repress and contain anti-colonial resistance.

The U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan follow the third variant. In the initial phase, the imperial armies engage in total occupation, unrestrained pillage of historical sites, utter degradation of the population, destruction of cultural institutions, and the systematic assassination of leading members of the local political, civil service and professional classes. Following the growth of massive resistance by secular and religious forces, uprooted and divorced from their essential everyday living, under constant physical and spiritual assaults, the AA occupation regime moves toward the “reconstruction” of a colonial repressive apparatus and governing bodies – beyond the walls, barbed wire enclosures and watch towers of the colonial army.

“Total war” doctrine continues to wreck havoc with minor concessions to enclaves of collaborators, most of whom are “dual citizens”, exiles whose loyalties are first and foremost to the empire, whose homes, pensions and even families (not to mention bank accounts and English rose gardens) are located in the cities of the imperial countries.

Total war and the Resistance

The practitioners of “total war” borrow heavily form the practice and doctrine of the Israeli colonial occupation of Palestine: practices of collective punishment, erasure of historical sites, destruction of homes, eradication of orchards and productive farms, bombing of small factories, building of ghetto enclosures (walls), massive forcible evictions, and especially torture and interrogation techniques designed especially to violate Islamic beliefs and the Arab identity. These techniques have been transmitted via Israeli advisers and training sessions to U.S. interrogators and incorporated into their manuals. It is precisely the common methods of both Israeli and Anglo-U.S. interrogation-torture techniques linked to the doctrine of “total war”, which has led to the common practice of SB against them.

Insofar as the interrogation-terror techniques strip their victims of all that is essential to their “spiritual self”, they also force upon the victims and their sympathizers a “new morality”, one that no longer abides by the older moral-religious precepts. In its place the “new morality” is the mirror image of the practitioners of “total war”. The SB act without concern for civilians, locations, time and circumstance. Like their interrogators, they seek to inflict the maximum damage to the “Western mind” – exposing their weakness, increasing their anxiety and fears, while undermining everyday routines. The key to the conversion of Islamists and even the secular opposition to suicide bombing and the practice of the “new morality” is not merely the political-military colonial occupation and war, but the resort to the specific practices of degradation inflicted on the colonial victim.

Degradation: The logic of total war

The Israelis have practiced torture by degradation for decades and have a powerful army of overseas supporters – professors, neo-cons officials, liberals, bankers, professionals, artists, journalists, and media moguls – providing justifications in the form of “ameliorating circumstances” and “moral equivalences”.

The Anglo-American practitioners of total war, impressed by the power of Israel to sustain its colonial occupation of Palestine and its impunity, overlooked the negative effects: the SB phenomenon, and Israel’s repugnancy to the non-European world (and even among many Europeans).

Degradation is specifically designed to “break” the “Arab” or “Islamic” Mind – as the Israeli psychological war experts labeled it – and secure an army of informers, agents and docile, terrorized released prisoners who would serve as exemplars to other would-be resistance fighters. While a few prisoners were “turned” through torture and blackmail and others were released as “broken” men and women incapacitated by profound psychological disorders, millions react with indignation, anger, and violence – and in some cases have taken the form of SB. The word from the victim-survivors of Israeli brutality and visual images provides a terribly graphic reality of systematic degradation of all that Arabs – Islamist or secular – hold sacred.

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The Suicide Bombers: The Sacred and the Profane

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