THE "BOOMING" PARTY

Created by the merger of the moribund (from the 1920s into the 1980s) Liberals and the short-lived 1980s "moderate alternative" to wild-eyed old Labour, the Social Democrats, the Liberal Democrats remain a third party, and have never quite figured out what they are supposed to be.

By most accounts, when in charge they are relatively good at running local government. Making sure the trash is collected and the streetlights are working seems comfortably within Lib Dem capacities. However, place the party on a national stage, and it is too often revealed as including way too many freaks, given its relatively small size. The BBC reports:

A Liberal Democrat MP has insisted she does not condone suicide bombings despite saying she would consider becoming one if she were Palestinian.

Jenny Tonge's remarks about the bombers have caused outrage among pro-Israel politicians and sparked calls for her party to condemn what she said. . .

. . ."I was just trying to say how, having seen the violence and the humiliation and the provocation that the Palestinian people live under every day and have done since their land was occupied by Israel, I could understand and was trying to understand where [suicide bombers] were coming from," Dr Tonge told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. . .

And even if we don't really know what the Lib Dems stand for, at least we know where Jenny's coming from: the "booming" wing of the party.

What Jenny's appraisal fails to account for is that if people who have it tough tend to become suicide bombers, becoming a suicide bomber has somehow remarkably been limited to those of a certain faith, especially from a particular part of the world.

After all, going out a-booming (and taking others with one) just hasn't caught on in the same way in South America, central America, southern Africa, and other places where local levels of poverty and despair, relatively speaking, make living on the West Bank and Gaza under "the occupation" look like the good life. Homes in the so-called "refugee camps" often have running water and al Jazeera on their satellite TV. In stark contrast, how many people in places like Mozambique never get a taste of even drinkable standing water? (That they don't have satellite is a given.)

That's probably because suicide bombing is not an outlet for the expression of personal frustration. Most suicide bombers are not the poorest of the poor. They are usually well-educated people, with reasonable incomes. They are usually recruited by violent, well-organized groups. (Only on the rarest of occasions do we hear of someone building a bomb quietly at home, and wandering out in despair, to do the dirty deed utterly alone.)

What is far more telling than Jenny's "feel the suicide bombers' pain" analysis is that the groups which recruit and organize suicide bombers are invariably at war with Israel -- and with America and, yes, with Britain. And they utilize suicide bombing akin to how half-trained Japanese pilots suicidally crashed planes into U.S. aircraft carriers and other ships off Okinawa in 1945.

Suicide bombing is not a cry for what the odd-bods -- especially on the left -- would term "social justice"; it is a war tactic.  ¶ by Robert, Friday, January 23, 2004