Reply #120: Suicide for causes is nothing new [View All]

[Zynx]

The Nazis and the Soviets proved that religion was not at all a prerequisite for completely suicidal actions. The Viet Cong did the same - the US Embassy attack was a suicide squad.

Two members of Delta Force hopped off their helicopter in Mogadishu to take on a few thousand people. You going to tell me that wasn't suicide?

Several of the plots for killing Hitler involved suicide bombing.

We conditioned tens of thousands of people in our missile and bomber forces during the Cold War to engage in actions that would mean almost certain death - either one-way bomber missions or sitting at the controls of your missile silo until the Soviet warhead landed on you.

Generally, the people engaging in this behavior weren't bombers - although I'm sure there were more than a few cases of people deliberately hiding grenades on themselves or something like that - but they were still all engaging in actions that would mean certain death.

For that matter, military forces - the good ones anyway - condition their soldiers that their life is less important than the success of an operation.

Otherwise, military forces simply wouldn't work at all because a great deal of what a soldier does on a daily basis is biologically irrational in the extreme. Giving your life for your country or your religion is fundamentally idiotic. You get no benefit, especially in those cases where there is no belief in an afterlife.

This mindset isn't confined at all to the Middle East. The fact that they think they are getting heavenly rewards may make it easier for them to embrace a plan that specifically involves dying, but that's about the only difference.