Iraqi militants strapped explosive belts onto two mentally disabled women last week, sent them into two crowded Baghdad markets and blew them up. Authorities said the two women had Down syndrome and may not have understood what they were about to do. Their belts were detonated remotely, 20 minutes apart, killing dozens.<\/p>\n
Neither the Islamic nor the Western worlds have come to grips with acts of such evil. Media accounts of the attacks focused on the sense of shock felt by Baghdad residents who had come to believe that security was improving. Destroying that sense of progress and trust in the Iraqi and U.S. governments was doubtless the terrorists’ goal. Equally horrifying, however, is what did not follow the barbarity in Baghdad: no outpouring of disgust from the Muslim world.<\/p>\n
What does this moral numbness mean? It appears to signify that terrorists have succeeded in forcing the public to view suicide bombing as an inevitable, unstoppable, even ordinary tactic of warfare. In truth, because the technique has proved so spectacularly successful at instilling chaos and despair — and because it is so cheap and difficult to deter — it has metastasized to societies that had never heard of such horrors before. Suicide bombings have now occurred in more than 30 countries. The traditional rationale — that suicide terrorism is the last resort of an occupied people against a far more powerful oppressor — no longer holds true. Everywhere, suicide terrorism has thwarted traditional military and counter-terrorist solutions.<\/p>\n