Suicide Bombing: BSG versus the Real World

Interesting show tonight. Like any good BSG episode it left me thinking about what I saw.

But what stood out for me wasn't the usual soap opera antics of the shows various villains and heros. It was the sight of Duck strapping on his bomb belt before heading off to detonate it, taking himself and dozens of others to the grave.

My first thought is what the hell were the BSG producers trying to accomplish with this abomination? I started to reach for the controller but I calmed down and decided to watch the rest.

So what were the producers trying to accomplish?

My first guess is that they are trying to draw a parrallel between the actions of men like the Islamists in Iraq (and dozens of other places) and what fictional BSG characters might be forced to commit under extreme pressure.

My conclusion is that other than the physical act of detonating the bomb belt the producers have utterly failed to draw an accurate parallel. But Moore and company may of unwittingly drawn a picture of the extreme differences in a very succesful way.

Consider this. The Resistance has resorted to using suicide bombing as a weapon of desperation. But its not greeted as an act of heroism. The tactic is (rightfully) regarded with shame and horror, an immoral act. The decision to use it is justified by military need but Colonel Tigh is under no illusions. He openly calls himself an evil man for its use. Duck himself is racked with shame as he contemplates his mission. Even if he hates his enemy its still an act of suicide and that is sinful in its own right.

In other words they act very much as Americans or other Westerners might in similar circumstances. Not surprising considering that BSG is a stand-in for American culture and its issues.

Contrast this with the Islamists who practice these methods as business as usual, often as political expediency. Its presented as an act of religious significance, a human sacrifice to glorify thier god. Please the god with an act of murder and he grants you the keys to paradise. Kill as many undesirables as you can and you have an honor guard to accompany you into the next life. Often these terrorists are regarded as very much like a pop star would be in the Western world and the terrorist's families gain wealth and prestige because of it.

In my opinion the producers were trying to show some sort of moral equivalency but failed spectacularly in doing so. Instead they have unintentionally shown the brutally stark differences in how various cultures treat the idea of suicide missions, its implementation, and the morality behind it.

Note: I know I'm not doing this topic justice and might (probably will) offend people with some the ideas presented here. Nor am I aiming this at the common Muslim. Its the extremists who serve as my example.

If anyone thinks its important I'm an American of Christian background.

Well I miss the first hour since I'm still at work BUT I catch right when Duck doing suicide and I think pretty much same like you cthulhu. You wording it better than I want to wording it. So I just leave it at that...

Agreed CylonGoddess. 100%

I was waiting for someone to articulate this well enough.

For those religious extremist who blow themselves up, they are quite convinced that their death not only gives them favor in God's eyes, but will give their family prestige and wealth. And they are supported by a good deal of the community in their act.

You really missed it.These people(in the show)are "DESPERATE" and are at the end of a sword,with no other way to fight back.I sure do hope that none of you are in a position of autharity,becuase you are not qualfied.

Cthulhu is right on target on some ways but not others. The show's decision to validate and legitimate the use of terror utterly failed since it the motivatons of the real world suicide bombers are not so nice. Take the time to google and read:

DETTERING THOSE WHO ARE ALREADY DEAD?
by Laurent Murawiec, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C.

But it does work on a marketing and propaganda level. The propaganda is the simplist. Since most people are not willing to actually research what is happening they take at face value what they see on tv. Most people simply don't know that the terror bombing in Iraq, far from rallying the troops and public, have made the bombers public enemy number 1. End result is that some people now think well of the sucide bombers. As PT Barumn said, "there is a sucker born every minute".

The marketing angle is a bit more complex. With in the political and cultural elite there is a real bias towards the left end of the political spectrum that distorts everything it touches. President Bush is hated because for no other reason than he is is not liberal. Bush is fighting the terrorists so the terrorists must be good. Blair is helping Bush, so Blair is bad. That hundreds of her majesty's subjects have dies in the WTC, Mali, Madrid, and other attacks is of no importance. Since the terrorists are good the people they kill must be "little eichmans" or perhaps the terrorists are just made insane by Bush's all powerful babddness (like the colonials are driven to desperation by the cylon occupation)

This is no sh*t, I work with a lesbian who cheers evry bit of bad news about the war in Iraq because it hurts bush. Do you have any concept of what those self same terrorists would do to her if they caught her?

Galactica garners rave reviews when it panders to this bias. Salon, The Rolling Stones, and other members of the intellectual ghetto have all swooned over the show for exactly this reason. For Moore and Eck who desperatly want BSG to break into the "mainstream" these accolades are worth any price.

This post has been edited by bsg79 on Sat 7 Oct 06, 14:28

Katana,

You might want to reread my post. Its not an explicit criticism of the Resistance's use of suicide bombing, but rather a criticism of the sloppy parallel (between the everyday bombings we see on the TV and the BSG situation) the show's producer's tried to invoke. It doesn't work for the reasons I stated earlier.

bsg79,

Unfortunately I think you are right on the money here.

This post has been edited by Cthulhu on Sat 7 Oct 06, 14:34

Please google and read the paper I pointed out before telling anyone they are not qualified. The goons who pulled off the 9-11 attacks were not poor or desperate but children of the upper middle class who were fed a steady diet of b.s. About the glory of martyrdom (big question; if killing oneself is so glorious why haven't Osma and company done it. Why is it always someone else who gets to enjoy the rewards of suicide?)

This is not the situation depicted on BSG, which is the point of Cthulhu's comments.

This post has been edited by bsg79 on Sat 7 Oct 06, 14:39

It's easy because they think they are the brain if the brain dead then who will lead? There's always have to be someone that putting 'a good idea' on desperate people. In BSG will be Saul...

Actually, in the podcast RDM made some of the exact same things:

Tigh knows what he is doing is evil.
It is out of military necessity.

Cthulhu, I somewhat disagree. The fact that suicide bombing was justified by military necessity vice religious conviction is really irrelevant. The point is that it is considered a legitimate means by which to strike at the enemy. And this is by a society that considers itself civilized. Either the tactic is an acceptable means or it isn't.

"Contrast this with the Islamists who practice these methods as business as usual, often as political expediency. Its presented as an act of religious significance, a human sacrifice to glorify thier god."

I feel you are using too broad a brush here. If it were really considered business as usual, there would not be such an elaborate recruiting and indocrination process for would-be bombers.

More importantly, this was the first suicide bombing. If the colonials want to use the tactic again, it will be hard to find recruits if you don't glorify what was done. Nobody will want to be a bomber if their family is ashamed and the gods are going to send you to Hades for what you did. I would submit that if the tactic continues, the "pop star" treatment, payments to families, and religious reasons will all be employed by the colonials to gain recruits.

[COLOR=blue]"In my opinion the producers were trying to show some sort of moral equivalency but failed spectacularly in doing so."[/COLOR]

I don't think he failed, or if he failed I don't think he that he failed spectacularly. I felt the parallels were a bit forced, and a bit sloppy like you said, but that's all.

And to the other posters, yes I dislike George Dumbya Bush and his ridiculous policies, but that doesn't mean I like or approve of the terrorists. I think he is the worst fool to sit in office since LBJ. So that woman in you office is being foolish (although how her being lesbian is relevant I don't know).

Once again, I feel too many people are viewing this as straight up allegory about Iraq and 9/11. It's not. Suicide bombing has been used in the Western World by such groups as the IRA and militia nuts like Timothy McVeigh. Now, the question is, we have notions of why suicide bombing is wrong. Moore is getting us to ask ourselves, "Is there a time when it could be the right thing to do."

Some in this thread seem to be losing sight of the fact that Duck went in there on his kamikazi mission to assassinate Baltar, not to merely make a statement. That was purely secondary.

I found the espisode to be flat and unoriginal. I expect better from the writers than to just rip-off today's news headlines. Yes, it's about Iraq/9-11 - I'm sure the writers would admit to it.

Now...the signal that Baltar wasn't going to be at the ceremony was missed, but the guy obviously wasn't there to take out Baltar. He was there to take revenge upon the humans who collaberated with the cylons in the incident that lead to his wife's death at the temple. He figured one of them must be among the recruits. At least that's the way I see it, based upon watching the webisodes.


This post has been edited by PeZzy on Sat 7 Oct 06, 18:17

Long time fan of the show.... First time post......

BUT one observation (And I hope its not considered off topic, in my mind it is completly on topic):

What is it with some of y'all who are seemingly incapeable of viewing the issues brought up here outside of an Iraq war context?

Look, if it helps you gain any moral clarity, substitute the colonists with "Jews", the cylons with "Nazis" and New Caprica with "Warsaw Ghetto"

I think everyone is too centered on modern use of suicide attacks to remember that they have a long history in military warfare. From WWII to the Crusades, they have been employed extensively. Ohka, Kaiten, and Kamikaze pilots, Viet Minh "death volunteers," the Japanese Red Army, even Australian soldiers fighting at Gallipoli conducted a suicide attack against the well defended positions of Turks in World War I. Military officers of the highest rank repeatedly ordered soldiers to charge positions that were defended with heavy automatic weapons, and they did.

Agreed. It's an analogy, not a straight 1:1 parallel

I liked that they changed the circumstances a bit and connected it more with the BSG universe. That way the issue can stand on its own without just being a comment on the news.
At the same time it makes people think about the realworld events.

There also isn't really a message or opinion that they writers want to convey. People don't need to be told what to think. A problem was presented and that's it. Any kind of message or moral would be out of place.

But best to ignore posts from pigheaded neocons who complain about an alledged "liberal bias" in the media and think that anyone who is against Bush is for terrorism. There are no words to counter such sheer stupidity.

This post has been edited by Serenity on Sat 7 Oct 06, 20:05

I just wanted to make a point about the IRA here. Ok with your other points though.

The IRA (& its splinter factions) have never intentionally conducted suicide bombing. A couple of instances where they got the timers wrong. But suicide bombing is usually practiced by extremists for reasons outlined elsewhere.

The IRA, always endeavoured to get their people out. or do detonations remotely like ETA, the Red Brigade and other European terrorist groups.

I think Moore is just going down the same road that has to a great extent ruined Comic Books as well...and that's trading the "fun" and "escapist" elements of fiction and subtituting their version of gritty reality, and taking things that are great moral issues and trying to "discuss" them in a context that has no morality, but only politics as a basis for discussion. And this trend away from escapism and towards "gritty reality" is lapped up by the intelligencia (ex: salon, rolling stone, etc) and they hand out awards for this stuff to each other, and then you get some nut-ball studio, or comic book company CEO who thinks, wow, our sales are down, we should hire these guys who won awards!

I have watched BSG from the beginning, and I would hate for the show to have peaked with the episode "22" but it's going to be the case if we get these issues rammed down our throats in ways that overwhelm all of the many great and so perfectly rendered aspects of this show!

After viewing the ep, I agreed with the first poster, that Moore seems to be trying awfully hard to make us have sympathy for a group he identifies as insurgents, and maybe it's not his overt intent, but it seems to me he's trying to use this to color our opinions of the real world.

I'll keep watching, but if I wanted to watch the real-world, I'd turn the TV off completely.

Spass

That's just showing how the current news is coloring your perception of the world.
The world doesn't just consist of Iraq and Afghanistan.

There are a number of insurgencies that are considered just and even heroic. Today the American revolutionaries would be called terrorist, and I'm sure the British looked at them not much differently than people today view islamic terrorists.
There were Polish or Yugoslavian partisans in WWII...

Or the example that New Caprica is most based on: Vichy France and the french resistance.
There are far more similarities with that and occupations in general than with Iraq specifically.

This post has been edited by Serenity on Sat 7 Oct 06, 23:09

.

cruades- failed endeavour
kamikaze pilots -failed endeavor, seen as shameful expoitation of and loss of lives when the leaders of imperial Japan knew the war was lost.
Japenese Red Army and other 1970's terror groups - failed endeavouor. See comments on the kamikaze.
As for World War 1, I think the British army of that time was described once "as lions led by asses". The French Army actually quit went "on strike" rather than serve under the nitwits in command.

Now then, given such an illustrious history why would anyone who is not a cave dwelling kook who thinks the dark ages were the high point of human history want to even consider such tactics.

Not mentioned on the show is the nuts and bolts of moving thirty plus thousand civilans out of New Caprica while under fire. A task made all the more difficult by the fact that:
a. The natural reaction to being under fire is to freeze up. Soliders are trained, by sheer repition if nothing else, to overcome this bad habit. Some one is going to have to kick, drag, and push the civies into the spacecraft.
b. Since the cylons will most likely not approve of the evacuation any sort of practice or even extensive review of the evacuation plan is impossible.
c. The orginal spacecraft have been allowed to lay fallow for over a year. Even with the "launch keys" made availiable (what ever they are) it will take time and effort to get the vessels ready for launch.

invoking military necessity would lead me to think that Tigh has more important things to do than run human bomb runs.

And as to unfairly comparing duck's final act to real world events. Moore and the cast are bragging about how hip and relevent the show is. As such they have an obligation, one would think, to get the facts right.

This post has been edited by bsg79 on Sun 8 Oct 06, 0:10

Tigh has definitely went off the deep end.

Actually, the use of suicide bombing "evolved" for Tigh. He wanted to get Baltar so damn bad and he had a volunteer.

However, once the suicide bombings prove so disruptive for the Cylons, he wasn't about to give them up. He is using them for a short period of time for a specific purpose, to give cover for the rescue.

I would guess there are cases in human history where suicide runs have been made to allow others to escape. Escape is much different than a military victory.