Ripples of Battle
How Wars of the Past Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think
Chapter One
The Wages of Suicide: Okinawa,
April 1-July 2, 1945
Recipe for a Holocaust
Throughout the fall of 2001 and early 2002, the military referents
in the West for the war against the Islamic fundamentalists were the
fanatical kamikazes of Okinawa of the past-their letters published
in newspapers, the Pacific war recounted by columnists, and veterans
of the conflict interviewed on television. Suicide bombing by nature
is at first horrifying, calling into doubt the notion of a shared
human instinct for self-preservation. Suicide killers are
purportedly of a creed not of this world, and thus instill despair
that such enemies can ever be thwarted and that somehow theirs is a
superior ideology by its singular ability to galvanize thousands to
kill themselves for the cause. Yet Okinawa reminds us that there are
plenty of far more frightening mechanisms to ensure that it fails.
Contrary to our own popular doubts and fears, the horror of Okinawa
entailed the frustration, not the success, of kamikazes. And with
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