Technically, no. <\/p>\n
At least that was the argument a feisty* co-worker and I put forth last night when we got the first-edition edition papers and were looking through them for errors. <\/p>\n
“Unwitting suicide bombers” \u2014 that’s the phrase that keeps popping up in all<\/a> the<\/a> reports<\/a>. It may seem completely stupid for me to quibble with semantics in the face of such a horrific act as strapping explosives to mentally disabled women and blowing them up in crowded markets to murder as many people as possible<\/i>, but I don’t ever think that accuracy is a bad thing. And I happen to feel like it underscores just how horrific the extremist mindset is when we have to think of completely new phrases and concepts<\/i> to describe the type of violence they are employing. <\/p>\n I know “unwitting suicide bomber” was chosen by reporters or editors because it so closely describes the scenario in as few words as possible. You take a familiar template \u2014 the suicide bomber with explosives strapped to his\/her chest \u2014 and inject “unwitting” in there in the hopes that people understand that it means that the people getting blown up weren’t hip to the plan. <\/p>\n Except that when you don’t know you’re doing to die, you’re not doing it intentionally, it’s not technically suicide. You take the intent out of it and we’ve got something altogether different. <\/p>\n