Suicide bombers: Motivated in the same way as any military organization

[Tesha]

(New Scientist magazine had the original article, but it's
subscription-only, so here's a related second-hand link...)

http://sify.com/news/international/fullstory.php?id=13895701

'That nice, young man may be a suicide bomber'

By Richard Ingham in Paris

Political leaders and the media usually portray suicide bombers as
crazed, impoverished, murderous or fanatically religious, and
generally the loner type.

Experts say the truth is far less gothic and, as a consequence,
strangely more terrifying.

The typical profile of a suicide attacker is someone who comes from a
good home, often has a good education, has friends and holds down a
steady job.

In other words: The man who blows himself and innocent people apart
on a London train could also be that nice young man who lives next
door. View images: Murder in London

"Study after study shows that suicide attackers and their supporters
are rarely ignorant or impoverished," says Scott Atran, a research
leader with France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS)
and assistant professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.

"Nor are they crazed, cowardly, apathetic or asocial. The common
misconception underestimates the central role that organisational
factors play in the appeal of terrorist networks.

-=-=-=-

The article in New Scientist went on to describe how the bombers
tend to do this because, after associating with their like-
minded comrades for a while, they come to believe that their
comrades expect certain behaviors of them and they would not
want to be seen as letting their comrades down. This especially
struck me yesterday when I read a posting here where someone was
describing why a soldier they knew returned to battle in Iraq,
even though it ended up costing him dearly. Essentially, he
didn't want to let his comrades down.

It's easy to dismiss suicide bombers as some kind of nuts, but
on closer inspection, it's clear that they're motivated by the
same root motivations as our "official" troops and the same
motivational management techniques are used on them to assure
that, when the moment comes, they will do as is expected of them.

Tesha

[happyslug]

1. That makes sense

In studies of US Troops after WWII on why they did not desert, the Studies kept finding it was because the Soldiers did not want to leave their buddies down. The threat of being Shot, imprisoned etc were all minor compared to leaving their buddies while the buddies were still in danger. Desertion went up when a soldier was re-assigned, or not attached to a unit (Or he was attached on line and thus had minimal contact with his fellow unit members).

[Tesha]

2. I guess not too many people want to think about this, ehh? (NT)

[htuttle]

3. We're all afraid of being called unamerican, or worse

Way I've always seen it -- members of any military (or para-military) are expected to lay down their lives for their mission, right? We give out medals (posthumously) to US soldiers who do that.

:shrug:

[ArkDem]

4. The soldier who wants to go back to his unit because he doesn't

want to let his friends down is, perhaps, at little different because he isn't certain he is going to die. I don't think you can equate that with a guy that walks into a restaurant seeking certain death and the deaths of whomever happens to be dining at the time.

[Tesha]

5. Really?

> The soldier who wants to go back to his unit because he doesn't
> want to let his friends down is, perhaps, at little different
> because he isn't certain he is going to die.

It's been pretty well documented that soldiers do this even when
it is a near certainty that they *ARE* going to die.

Seriously, it's turning out that there's very little to separate
(psychologically) a uniformed army soldier and a suicide bomber.
We knew it wasn't true for "effects" (causing the massive, deliberate
deaths of non-combatants) and now we're learning it's just as true
for "causes" as well.

Tesha

[ArkDem]

6. What you mean 'we', kemosabe?