My friend Max Sawicky asks on his MaxSpeak Weblog:

What is clearly portrayed in the [New York Times] article [about suicide bomber motivations] is the willingness to die for one's country.... Naturally there are personal factors mixed in.... Why do we celebrate Americans who risk their lives for the common good, but we describe others loyal to other nations or causes as "a psychotic cult" and the like?

I think the answer is clear. For the "peoples of the book", it has never been enough to place your life on the line in a just war, you are also supposed to conduct the war honorably. This was not the case in other times and places. It was Temujin who said that the greatest pleasure was to "look at the dead bodies of your enemies, and hear the screams of their wives and daughters as they were carried off into slavery." Other noble Romans regarded Julius Caesar's practice of clementia--mercy--as simply weird (and Caesar's mercy was strictly relative: our guess is that his armies killed 1/10 of the population of Gaul and enslaved another 1/10 during his ten year long campaign to conquer it).

But among "peoples of the book"--especially the classic Islamic tradition--there has been this demand that heroes not just fight bravely in a just cause and be willing to die for it, but also fight nobly. This is rooted in a saying of the Prophet Muhammed (Peace be upon him!): "Do not kill any old person, any child or any woman... She was not fighting. How then she came to be killed?" When the rightly-guided Caliph Abu Bakr gave his final commands to the army setting out to conquer Byzantine Syria, he said:

Stop, O people, that I may give you ten rules for your guidance in the battlefield. Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone...

Moreover, the Kurdish prince with the greatest reputation in the West--Salah ed Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub al Tikriti--won his reputation by his willingness to take careful steps to spare non-combatants. When he and his army arrived to besiege the castle of Kerak in Moab, they were informed that they had interrupted the wedding of Humphrey of Toron, the son of the chatelaine Stephanie. Saladin did not call off the assault, but he did order that the tower in which the bride and groom were lodged was not to be bombarded, and he agreed to partake of the wedding feast.

It is within this cultural context that the lack of praise for suicide bombers "bravery and self sacrifice" becomes understandable. Reactions would, I think, be very different--both in the U.S. and in Israel--if the boys of Al-Aqsa put on uniforms, assembled in groups of ten, and attacked Israeli army bases. Certainly they would do their cause less harm. They might do it considerable good. Posted by DeLong at June 22, 2002 07:17 AM