Posted by zazenduck on June 15, 2006, at 18:20:54
In reply to fearful asymmetry, posted by zeugma on June 12, 2006, at 18:50:50
The IRA in the early eighties used suicide by starvation as a weapon in the English jails. Thatcher chose to allow them to starve to death rather than use force feeding which was the American strategy a few months before the hangings. (The hunger strike ended in the face of forced feeding.) Was it successful? I don't know. It certainly kept the issue in the public eye and an asymmetric war is political. The monks who burned themselves to death in Vietnam were I think instrumental in the end of that war. So I think that it can be a weapon.
> It is interesting to see the latest application of 'asymmetry' by a military professional. The camp commander of Guantanomo bay, Rear Adm. Harry Harris, is on record as saying, of three detainees' recent suicides there:
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> "I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us," Harris said.
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poster:zazenduck
thread:656104
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20060610/msgs/657356.html