This is Beginning to Erode my Admiration for Fervent Islam

[DogOnPorch]

I think the line between what you call suicide attacks and "suicidal attacks" is drawn pretty thin. Soviet soldiers often hadn't even the faintest hope of staying alive in many of the situations they were forced into. The only difference was that the Japanese kamikaze pilots did it individually, whereas Russians were forced to do it by the thousands at a time.

Let me put it this way... if one of the kamikaze pilots harbored hopes of jumping out of his plane before it crashed into its target, landing in the ocean, swimming back to shore, and staying alive, would that have made his attack any less of a "suicide attack"? I think his chances in such an attempt may well have exceeded the chances for Russian soldiers to survive some of the situations they were placed into, such as rushing crossfires from multiple German machine gun nests, completely emptyhanded.

To die in the service of the Emperor was the highest honor of the Bushido code other than victory. The big difference between a Japanese soldier and a Russian was that the Russian didn't want to die in service of Stalin...quite the opposite, in fact...like A Canadian trooper. When the Battle Kiev (1941) was fought, the 750,000 trapped Soviet soldiers didn't die to the last man...they surrendered en masse; as they did at numerous other battles on the Eastern Front in those early days. The Japanese, however as I'm sure you're aware, rarely surrendered...often those who did surrender were Koreans. All soldiers aren't created (trained/motivated) equally.

Even during the early days of non-stop victories (before Midway), the Japanese Banzai charge was a common affair.

Edited July 19, 2010 by DogOnPorch

[DogOnPorch]

I think mixed with an overall callousness towards human life. They were one small step above radical Islam. Remember these Cossacks were the same drunken mobs that burst into Jewish homes during Passover and drove the Jews en masse from Russia and Ukraine during the 1890's.

During WW2, the Red Army was a mix of very good units and very bad units. The Guards could be trusted to behave like soldiers and were unlikely to rape and pillage. The Siberians, Soviet Islamic troops and other assorted ruffian units, however, were very nasty to the local German population.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guards_unit

[Jack Weber]

While they certainly had no regard for human life, I would still not equate them with radical Islam. In WWII, the Russians were fighting to prevent a ruthless and terrible enemy from taking over their homeland. The USSR did more (and sacrificed more) to annihilate Nazi Germany than all the other allies combined, by far. That alone wins them renown and respect in my book.

To refer to Soviet soldiers as "Cossacks" would be quite an insult to many of them (the vast majority were not cossacks). And, while antisemitism has certainly been rife in Russia for hundreds of years, do not forget that it was nonetheless Russian soldiers who liberated many concentration camps, Russia where many eastern European Jews sheltered from the Nazis, the USSR which recognized Israel only three days after its independence.

Fair enough,but remember they were Communists who were equally ruthless and terrible...They just had a longer period of time to ring up the body count...They were a necessary evil to rid the world of NAZIsm,but Stalin was no angel.

(I here Licky's footsteps )

Also rememeber that the Soviets did'nt shut down Auschwitz...They simply used it to get rid of the enemies of the Soviet state....

[ToadBrother]

While they certainly had no regard for human life, I would still not equate them with radical Islam. In WWII, the Russians were fighting to prevent a ruthless and terrible enemy from taking over their homeland. The USSR did more (and sacrificed more) to annihilate Nazi Germany than all the other allies combined, by far. That alone wins them renown and respect in my book.

Radical Islamists feel precisely the same way, viewing the use of suicide attacks as a means to prevent their culture and religion from being diminished or fading away. I really don't see much of a difference at all. In almost all cultures the notion of sacrifice for one's family/tribe/nation is a powerful one, which is why most mythologies are full of examples of such individuals.

Christianity is founded on a god-man who willingly went to his death on the cross for the sins of humanity, and Christianity honors its martyrs probably more than any other group.

Islamist suicide bombers aren't doing something new, they are being fooled by one of the most profound and powerful cultural motifs we know of.

[bloodyminded]

While they certainly had no regard for human life, I would still not equate them with radical Islam. In WWII, the Russians were fighting to prevent a ruthless and terrible enemy from taking over their homeland. The USSR did more (and sacrificed more) to annihilate Nazi Germany than all the other allies combined, by far. That alone wins them renown and respect in my book.

To refer to Soviet soldiers as "Cossacks" would be quite an insult to many of them (the vast majority were not cossacks). And, while antisemitism has certainly been rife in Russia for hundreds of years, do not forget that it was nonetheless Russian soldiers who liberated many concentration camps, Russia where many eastern European Jews sheltered from the Nazis, the USSR which recognized Israel only three days after its independence.

True. A rotten and dangerous political/economic system doesn't undermine the clearly positive contributions the people made.

[bloodyminded]

Radical Islamists feel precisely the same way, viewing the use of suicide attacks as a means to prevent their culture and religion from being diminished or fading away. I really don't see much of a difference at all. In almost all cultures the notion of sacrifice for one's family/tribe/nation is a powerful one, which is why most mythologies are full of examples of such individuals.

Christianity is founded on a god-man who willingly went to his death on the cross for the sins of humanity, and Christianity honors its martyrs probably more than any other group.

Islamist suicide bombers aren't doing something new, they are being fooled by one of the most profound and powerful cultural motifs we know of.

Exactly so. Islamic suicide bombers are committing evil; but their intent is not to commit evil. They don't wring their hands in delight at the prospect of motiveles malignity.

Edited July 19, 2010 by bloodyminded

[DogOnPorch]

Also rememeber that the Soviets did'nt shut down Auschwitz...They simply used it to get rid of the enemies of the Soviet state....

When the Soviets arrived at Auschwitz, the place was already half demolished. Treblinka was just an open field with scars where railway tracks once ran.

[ToadBrother]

Exactly so. Islamic suicide bombers are committing evil; but their intent is not to commit evil. They don't wring their hands in delight at the prospect of motiveles malignity.

Even the concept of evil doesn't do much good. They're evil to us, to be certain, because they intend to harm us. They're justification is that we're evil to them, because we harm them, and one can't entirely dismiss the point that the industrialized world (not just the West, but the USSR in its turn and China nowadays) have had some hand in the woes of these places. I'm not saying we're ultimately responsible, because I think the problems in the Islamic world are far more complex than some of the far right nut jobs would have us believe, and like all things it boils down to economics, but still, the West, because of its desperate need of oil, and even before that for control of key trade routes, hasn't exactly endeared itself to the populations of the region.

But in a more general way, who is evil and who is not can be very subjective. It's the old question as to whether someone is a terrorist or a freedom fighter, and it's largely a matter of perspective. To the occupying Germans the French Resistance were a pack of murderous terrorists, to the white South African regime Nelson Mandela was a terrorist, and yet to us, these two are heroes of the resistance to tyranny. To my mind, calling someone "evil" is just shorthand tribalism "It's okay to kill/maim/imprison them because they're evil."

I'm not saying we shouldn't battle terrorism, not by a long shot, but neither should we fall into the easy trap of calling the believers in Islamist ideologies evil, or even the ideologies themselves evil. They are ideologies that clash with our ideologies, and we obviously want our ideology to win out, but we should remain objective, and not fall for rhetorical slights of hand. And as far as suicide bombers that means accepting that they are part of a vast set of cultural motifs of self-sacrifice for the cause, and not some new conceptualization. People throughout history have willingly gone to their deaths, either as martyrs or in a more active way (take out as many of the enemy as I can sort of thing), and suicide bombers are part of those groups.

[DogOnPorch]

They are ideologies that clash with our ideologies, and we obviously want our ideology to win out, but we should remain objective, and not fall for rhetorical slights of hand.

Objective to a point.

Things do have a way of getting out-of-hand.

[ToadBrother]

Objective to a point.

Things do have a way of getting out-of-hand.

I agree completely. I never said there wasn't evil, I said it's a dangerous concept. Using the Nazis is to argue from an extreme example, most things are not nearly so black and white. But even with the Nazis, the root anti-Semitism had been largely shared by a large number of people throughout Europe for centuries, a couple of thousand years or more if you count the Greeks' dislike for Jews. Edward I and Ferdinand and Isabella had to content themselves with expelling Jews from their domains, but one wonders what would have happened if they had had Zyklon-B. To my mind, the chief difference between the Holocaust and all the other acts of murder and persecution that Christian nations had subjected the Jews to was a matter of scale. Nazi Germany was the first place to apply industrial and management principles to dealing with the Jewish "problem", in other words, they were just more professional about it. If murdering six million Jews is evil, is murdering a few thousand in a purge or riot better, leaving them out in mud flats to die at high tide somehow more acceptable? The record of attacks on Jews, both spontaneous and more organized, doesn't begin in 1933. What began in 1933 was the merging of science, organization and hatred into the Final Solution, even the name suggesting that there had been other, less successful solutions.

[DogOnPorch]

What began in 1933 was the merging of science, organization and hatred into the Final Solution, even the name suggesting that there had been other, less successful solutions.

True indeed. Only Poland under Casimir and a few other friendly kings accepted the Jews without much fuss.

[jbg]

True indeed. Only Poland under Casimir and a few other friendly kings accepted the Jews without much fuss.

Often the Jews were of use to royals but not the people. Most people don't like their creditors too much.

[ToadBrother]

Often the Jews were of use to royals but not the people. Most people don't like their creditors too much.

Not to many people other than the nobility and the landed gentry had any meaningful capacity to borrow money from Jewish lenders. What did often happen was when a nobleman found himself unable or unwilling to pay a debt to a Jew was the inflaming of hatreds amongst the commoners in the area against the Jews, usually leading to the Jewish lender being forced to flee.

It certainly wasn't universal, and there were some heroes, but even where Jews found relative peace, as in Central and Eastern Europe, they were more tolerated than anything else. The core anti-Semitism existed, even in countries like France, which had ostensibly become secular (ie. the Dreyfus Affair).

[jbg]

It certainly wasn't universal, and there were some heroes, but even where Jews found relative peace, as in Central and Eastern Europe, they were more tolerated than anything else. The core anti-Semitism existed, even in countries like France, which had ostensibly become secular (ie. the Dreyfus Affair).

I wouldn't exactly call Central and Eastern Europe safer than France during 1892-3 when L'Affaire Dreyfusse erupted. The pogroms in Ukraine and Russia, especially the Kisinev Pogrom of 1892 forced Jews by the millions to flee to North America.