Smells like Teen Spirit

So the London blasts were the work of suicide bombers. And they were boys-next-door, 'clean-skins', cricket lovers, had girlfriends etc etc. The media insists on treating this as real news, but I don't think anyone is surprised. Of course they were what they were.

Once you channel normal teen rebellion into martyrdom, you have a good supply of human beings who can simply be substituted for electronic timers. For unlike, say, the killing of Rajiv Gandhi, there was no operational need for the bombs to be human in London (like Madrid, where there were no suicides) The suicides were there simply to make the point that there are people willing to die for this cause.

People who believe in the next world more than this one have surely made more trouble than almost anything else in the history of the world. The world is full of boys willing to carry backpacks that are their tickets to heaven on to crowded trains.

I take the schoolbooks from your pack
Plastics, wire and your kiss
The breath of eternity on your lips
In the crowded marketplace
I drift from face to face
I hold my breath and close my eyes
And I wait for paradise

--Bruce Springsteen, 'Paradise'

Update (July 20, 2005)

Got this link on Bruce Schneier's blog. Robert Pape is an acedemic who has studied suicide terrorism for a long time. Here's what he says in an interview:

Islamic fundamentalism is not as closely associated with suicide terrorism as many people think. The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.
This is a Marxist group, a completely secular group that draws from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of the country. They invented the famous suicide vest for their suicide assassination of Rajiv Ghandi in May 1991. The Palestinians got the idea of the suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers.

Link to complete interview.