Copycats

In the days after the aftermath of September 11th, the thing that bothered me the most and what I wrote about was that suicide attacks essentially changes the entire dynamics of dealing with hijackings, hostage situations and virtually any threat. Thus far, the assumption has always beent hat the prepetrators atleast fear death and want to get themselves out alive and therefore that gives us a few means of trying to analyze a situation. But when people lose respect for life and they have nothing more to lose, then it changes the rules of the game.

My mom forwarded me this news story this evening: Suicide attack in J&K assembly kills 29. If you look at the story and see the picture of the car that was used in the attack... a Tata Sumo is about as big as a Land Cruiser (okay, definitely yuckier than a Land Cruiser, but dimension wise that would give you an idea). This is precisely what is scary... the fact that there will be more lunatics who will make belief their weapon (see my previous diatribe on this in the archives).

I think the best illustration of how this changes the rules of the game is in this story where a United Airlines pilot delivered a pre-flight speech in which he instructed passengers how to overpower any hijackers that might be aboard. An article on Salon.com - Experts urge airline passengers to fight that was linked to the story also put it well:

The take-charge approach is a shift in decades-long attitudes by both pilots and passengers that cooperation is the best approach for dealing with hijackers.

But that belief "was based on the fundamental premise that the hijackers are rational human beings and want to live," said Raleigh Truitt, a pilot who heads his own aviation consulting firm in New Jersey.

"When you're on an airplane and it's controlled by people who are ... bent on destroying themselves and others," he said, "the reaction has to be different."

Be it a plane, a car bomb, a shooting spree, biological weapons, chemical weapons or any other form of action that causes harm to innocent people... what is really the recourse against such brainwashing and complete loss of sensibility? Is there any?