Asymmetric Warfare

BBC News

The suicides of three detainees at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amount to acts of war, the US military says.

The camp commander said the two Saudis and a Yemeni were “committed” and had killed themselves in “an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us”.

I thought it was meant to be the British who were the country you embarrassed into losing. To admit this as a viable tactic of warfare is incredible.

Michael Bentine had a sketch about a kamikaze being debriefed after having unsuccessfully flown several; it turned out that he was planning to land on a carrier and commit hara-kiri “to make the enemy feel sorry, Sir”.

Later, Monty Python came up with the suicide squad in The Life of Brian.

And now, the US Military.

What is going to be the next horrifying tactic of terrorism? Co-dependence?

“They made us invade Afghanistan for their own good, we couldn’t help ourselves ?”

Comments

2 responses to “Asymmetric Warfare”

  1. bartb
    re: Asymmetric Warfare

    Some interesting statistics (and comments) on Charles Stross’ blog:

    http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2006/06/11/

    Bart

  2. Dave Walker
    re: Asymmetric Warfare

    The Western experience (almost invariably by observation) of suicide claimed to be based on ideological grounds is rare.

    Even when the deceased has not been subject to the mental torture of 5 years in a rather brutal prison with no expectation of a trial date, eg from records of the bloody progress of allied forces up the Pacific island chain towards Japan in 1944-5, I’ve never seen any evidence of the mass suicides of Japanese military and civilians being described in terms even remotely as contrived as “asymmetric warfare”.

    Something in the American military mind has disconnected. Welcome, doublethink, 22 years late.

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