Submissiveness, inability to think and decide for oneself, insensitivity to the feelings of others, perversion, cowardice, hatefulness, cruelty and sadism are the personality traits that cause one to commit or organize a suicide attack. Sadly, these characteristics are unchangeable, once present in an individual. A person caught planning a suicide attack therefore is hard to stop, and even if stopped remains a life-long walking time bomb.
The nature of these attacks, rooted in extreme cowardice, makes it impossible to call the successful attacker to account. Our judicial systems are powerless against who is dead already. The suicide attackers go unpunished as they hold us hostage with terror, even though their number of victims is low compared to that in an all-out war. It is the fighting strategy of who possess no inner values or ethics. Not just different ethics, but none at all.
It is said by some that suicide attacks come forth from desperation. This is unlikely. A severely depressed and desperate individual may indeed kill oneself and in rare cases take immediate relatives with one to the grave, but that is not what we are looking at. Suicide attacks are organized systematically, meticulously, and in cold blood, and target only complete strangers. There is no emotion or desperation involved; the attacks are carried out by mindless zombies inspired or brainwashed by a sick ideology whose aim is to dominate through fear, violence, and destruction, and to do so by manipulating its lowest-quality adherents. The degree of planning, and absence of desperation, are further betrayed by the strategy of embracing a bystander, typically a woman or old person who can not defend oneself, just seconds before the girdle of explosives goes off, to be certain of at least one casualty, and to maximize suffering for the person in question who is then faced with the certainty that death will follow within the next several moments.
Admittedly, the probability for a random Western citizen to meet with this terror is close to zero. But that does not excuse our looking away and letting the bullies have their perverted gratification. It is the task of the good, the conscientious, the ethical, to draw lines between what is acceptable and what must never be, and to act when those lines are crossed. And as suicide attackers cross the ultimate line, they must be confronted with the ultimate consequence.
It is necessary and urgent to reinstate death penalty for those caught preparing suicide attacks, since that is the only way to stop them. And after a successful attack, the dead attacker's country of origin must be held responsible for the damage. Not only the material damage but also the casualties, at a rate in the order of several hundred million euro per killed innocent. If the country fails to pay, action must be taken against it when its debt from suicide attacks exceeds a certain amount, in the order of several billion. Then, if the country still keeps producing suicide attackers time and time again, still fails to control the evil internally, it must be considered in seriousness if that nation is to be sustained in the world at all.
A year after writing this article it came to my attention that the International Court of The Hague has ruled that Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, which ensures the right of self-defence in the event of an armed attack against a member state, does not apply to countries attacked by a terrorist organization (rather than by another country). In other words, we are required to let the terrorists have their way, and the terrorists know their activities are a safe, unpunishable mode of warfare.