Civilians Are Targets of Terrorism

Civilians, both here and abroad, are targets of terrorism whose goal is to influence political leaders. The San Bernadino attack brought renewed cries for gun control but the killers also had 12 pipe bombs ready for use.

A front page editorial in the New York Times Dec. 5, calling for stricter gun laws, does not mention bombs at all. Key ingredients for a pipe bomb, including miniature Christmas tree lights that can set them off, are easily purchasable. A video on how to make a pipe bomb is on YouTube.

The most comprehensive database on suicide attacks is kept by the University of Chicago under the name The Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism.

Its “Suicide Attack Database,” available to the public, tracks 4,620 attacks in 40+ countries from 1982 to August 2015.

Car bombs were used in 2,644 (57%) of the attacks, killing 24,595 and wounding 67,356. The database is searchable in numerous ways including by type of attack, groups doing it, weapons used, location and gender of the attackers.

Suicide attacks spurted 94% in 2014 to 592 that kiled 4,400 vs. 3,200 deaths in 2013, according to the Institute for National Security Studies, Israel.

We classify the Dec. 2 attack by Syed Farook and wife Tashfeen Malik as suicide in nature because, rather than surrender, they fought a battalion of cops which could only have resulted in their deaths.

A truck loaded with fertilizer, gasoline and propane was set to explode on May 1, 2010 in Times Square and would have caused thousands of deaths. However, the mixture was faulty and the only thing it caused was smoke which brought police to the scene.

Civilians Are Target of “War of Nerves”

Civilians, who invariably have no means of defending themselves from armed assailants bent on their murder, are targets of the violence.

Targeting civilians was a major tactic of both sides in World War II. London was a target of German rockets and allies bombed many German cities that had no particular military value, one of them being Dresden, memorialized in the Kurt Vonnegut book Slaughter House Five.

The U.S. bombed Japanese cities in an effort to break the will of leaders. One result was the initiation, late in the war, of suicide bombers.

Gerald Thomas

The damage done by the bombers, which became Japan’s principal means of defense, was “almost unbelievable” according to former Navy pilot Gerald Thomas who experienced three such attacks. He served as president of New Mexico State University from 1970-84.

His research showed that 7,465 Kamikaze pilots flew to their deaths in sinking 120 ships and damaging “many more.” The attacks killed 3,048 sailors and wounded 6,025, he found. U.S. Navy stats are that 34 ships were sunk, 368 were damaged, 2,800 were killed and 4,800 were wounded.

The fear and panic generated by the suicide attackers caused some sailors to become “so jittery” they fired on their own planes, he wrote.

About 20% of the attacks succeeded. Almost unstoppable was the special “piloted missile” that Japan developed. A missile with one-ton of explosives was attached to an airplane that gave the pilot no means of escaping. The plane was dropped from 25,000 feet and glided to within three miles of the target. Three rocket engines then propelled the craft to 600 mph.

The use and effectiveness of suicide bombers by Japan was a factor in President Truman’s decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945, killing hundreds of thousands.

Recruiting Suicide Attackers Discussed

Thomas, who died at the age of 94 on July 13, 2013, wrote that there are “similarities between the shock of Dec. 7, 1941 and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2011.”

Both events were complete surprises, cost many lives and united America against an enemy, he wrote.

By coincidence, this essay is appearing on the 74th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.

However,Thomas said that the enemy in World War II was “easy to define and locate. Not so after 9/11. The enemy is now difficult to locate and even more difficult to identify.”

The other similarity between the two wars, he said, is “fanaticism and suicide tactics.” Suicide bombers were not used in Pearl Harbor but they became a major weapon late in the war.

The recruitment of suicide bombers who were mostly young and even college students, has been verified in detail. Recruits were told what heroes they would be by flying to their deaths. They also faced rejection by their superiors and peers should they return from a mission. Many books have been written about the suicide bombers.

Suicide Recruits Abound in Middle East

Similar nationalistic and religious pressures are being put on candidates in the Middle East and elsewhere who are needed for suicide missions.

A suicide bomb killed 241 Marines in Beirut, Lebanon on Oct. 23, 1983, causing President Reagan to pull American combat troops from that area.

Robert Pape, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, said he assembled the first complete data on suicide attacks after 9/11 because he wanted to figure out how “an Islamic fundamentalist goes from being a devout, observant Muslim to somebody who is suicidally violent.”

Patterns he found were that about half of the attacks were “secular” in nature, not involving a religious motive. He also found that 95% of the attacks were “in response to military occupation.”

Pape

A community that is being occupied creates a sense among the inhabitants that they have “lost their self-determination.”

Attacks are effective because they present the “idea that where there’s one suicide attacker, there might be many more,” he says.

Bombs Replace Troops

Pape notes that the current strategy of the Obama Administration as well as that of France and other nations is to strike from the air rather than send in troops.

This makes sense if nationalist groups are involved, he says. “Ground troops are going to make anger or terrorism there worse. Which is why when we invaded and conquered Iraq, we produced the largest suicide campaign in history.”