[Milton-L] Samson as suicide bomber

[Derek Wood]

Remember also the assassinations of Indira Gandhi and her son, not to mention that of the Mahatma. If you're looking at nationalist and religious motives, Japanese suicide attacks during WW II are relevant: I don't think the uniforms are important. The original Assassins did not die in explosions but they were expected to be killed inevitably, and were honoured for the self-sacrifice.
 
Derek N. C. Wood,
Senior Research Professor and Shastri Fellow,,
St. Francis Xavier University,
ANTIGONISH,    NS,
Canada,    B2G 2W5
 
e-mail: dwood at stfx.ca
phone: 902-867-2328 (w)
           902-863-5433 (h)
fax:      902-867-5400
web:     http://www.stfx.ca/people/dwood <http://www.stfx.ca/people/dwood/Welcome.html> /Welcome.html 

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From: milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu on behalf of f.mohamed00 at gmail.com
Sent: Sun 10-May-09 1:20 PM
To: John Milton Discussion List
Subject: Re: Re: [Milton-L] Samson as suicide bomber


I believe Carrol Cox has in mind the work of Robert Pape, now available in the important book _Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism_. Pape and others have shown that the Tamil Tigers, which is not a religious movement at all, is one of the groups most frequently engaging in suicide attack. But complicating the assertion that this is only the military tactic of a nationalist struggle is the culture that has developed in the Tamil cause, which elevates self-sacrifice to the kind of cosmic virtue that one would associate with religion.

For those interested, Wikipedia has a detalied synopsis of Pape's book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_to_Win
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