Making sense of suicide missions

This valuable collection includes five case studies focused on suicide missions. These are followed by three papers aimed at understanding motivation, from the viewpoints of both the individuals who kill themselves and the organizations that usually send them on their way. Mia Bloom, Robert Pape, and Ami Pedahzur are among the authors who have written first-rate books about suicide terrorism, i.e., terrorist attacks that can only be successfully completed if the perpetrators die in the course of their operations, and attacks directed against noncombatants on behalf of such insurgent organizations as Hezbollah, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and al Qaeda. This volume departs from this format by including essays about the Japanese Kamikaze in the last two years of WW II and the self-immolations of Buddhist priests during the Vietnam War. The Kamikazes, of course, were instruments of official government policy, while the Vietnamese priests chose to make a point by killing themselves, not others. The three interpretive essays offer insightful comments on individual motivation as well as on the goals of the various organizations that promote the killings. --Choice (Get the Book)