Opaque Lucidity

Suicide Factor

If you're a Battlestar Galactica fan, then you watched tonight's season opener with some interest; I certainly did. There were some things I expected, but one thing I did not: a part of the story involving humans attacking Cylons via suicide attacks.

The producers of BSG are political animals and they are open about their intention to bring real-world issues into the fictional world of BSG. For the most part, they have done this seamlessly and it's interesting to ponder how the last few thousand human beings would react in similar circumstances in real life. But the suicide bomber thing is different because it reminded me of something very real: the basic liberal misunderstanding of morality and violence.

You hear a phrase when liberals talk about suicide bombers in Israel: "the cycle of violence". This phrase seeks to equate acts of terrorism with acts of military self-defense. To them, they are the same thing, since they believe violence is violence and it's all evil. You'll hear their bromide that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, as if the truth of that statement makes their childish view of the world more acceptable.

No one likes to see people die, but we all know that we live in a world where people die so others can live. This is the nature of our species and it is my belief that we will always be this way. Call it the sinful nature of man or whatever, but if you think that humans will ever live completely in peace with one another, you're ignorant of history and of human nature.

You can not look at the physical manifestations of violence and say that suicide bombing or the use of nuclear weapons are immoral in themselves. What makes any action immoral is its effect on others. Look at the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Had the US not dropped those weapons, an invasion of the Japanese Home Islands would have taken place that fall---and millions of people would have died. You can say that the death of hundreds of thousands from burns and radiation sickness is immoral, but if that is your assertion, would the invasion of Japan have been less immoral? Sometimes, our only choice is between the lesser of two evils.

And so the producers of BSG introduced suicide bombings to the show as a way to say, "Gee, what if the good guys resorted to this?". Maybe I'm wrong, but I see this as their attempt to make the Deep Thinkers out there re-evaluate the world scene. But I can sit here and tell you that if you took 50,000 Americans and imprisoned them without trial in a city, it would only be a matter of time before they started blowing themselves up to make a point. Would that be immoral? If it led to the survivors' freedom, then I would say no, but only because of the cause they are fighting for.

And, no, you can't say that the average Palestinian suicide bomber is fighting for freedom. On average, he's a teenager who was recruited and brainwashed so that he wouldn't think twice about killing innocent civilians. They don't know it, but they are fighting, ultimately, for those who wish to establish a caliphate over the entire Middle East. And that is not worth dying for, regardless of who you are and where you're from.