The individuals perpetrating the attacks have been brainwashed so as to believe that the objects of their murderous work (even children) are "infidels" or evil human beings who merit slaughter or severe injury, and that by inflicting punishment upon them the attackers are thus acting on behalf of "God" (or "Allah"). In meting out "punishments" of death and crippling wounds as purported service to "God," even though the brainwashed individual uses herself or himself as the weapon to effect the "punishments," the individual has not merited the description of either herself or himself, or of her or his act, as a "suicide." To describe either the act or the individual as a "suicide" is to commit a perversion as serious as the "religious" motivation entailed. Typically, one commits suicide by jumping off a building or bridge, by using a gun to fire a bullet into one's mouth or brain, by swallowing a poison or a vial of barbiturates, by hanging oneself, or by some other act directed solely at oneself. When an individual arms herself or himself with a bomb or any explosive device for the specific purpose of using herself or himself as a weapon to kill others, that is not a suicide. If the intention of the act is to kill others indiscriminately, or without identification of them as a group, the act carried out on that basis is by definition a homicide or an assassination. If the purpose of the act is to kill members of a specific group, such as Jews or Americans or Christians or Shiites or infidels (non-believers in one's own religious beliefs), the act is then an act of genocide, not suicide. When the perpetrator knows that her or his attack will not kill everyone in the path of it but will only maim or cripple or otherwise injure some or many of the victims, and therefore she or he packs her or his explosive device with shrapnel to cause intensified injuries, the perpetrator is not carrying out a suicide attack. The act then becomes an intentional wounding of other human beings: an assault by common definition and a battery by the definition in law.
THE POINT
Your persistent error in terminology is not a mere matter of semantics. When you refer to the homicidal or genocidal maniacs killing and wounding other human beings by making weapons of themselves as "suicide bombers," you dignify them as martyrs for a cause. In effect you are using the pages of your newspaper to assist them in their propaganda. That is hardly your proper role as reporters and editors. You have no obligation to describe homicidal or genocidal maniacs and their acts as they describe themselves and their acts. Your obligation is not to them but to your readers, and the obligation to your readers is to use words in the English language as they are defined in dictionaries and in common use. No dictionary defines "suicide" in the way you are using it. No one on this earth but a maniac following perverted religious beliefs or a member of the mass communications media describes the murder and maiming of men, women, and children as an act of suicide, no matter what the means used to perpetrate that homicidal or genocidal act.
Am I thus putting you reporters and editors in the same category as the lunatics killing and injuring people on the basis of their perverted religious beliefs? To the extent that you are using language in the same way they do, you bet your life I am!
Your ongoing errors in your use of terms have been called to your attention many times. Yet you obstinately persist in your very destructive errors. I would like to know why. Are you advocates for violent Muslim groups? Do you persist in the errors on the basis of monkey see-monkey do, following the lead of others in the media who continue to misuse and abuse the word "suicide" because, well, "everybody else is doing it"? Or is it because you are so ignorant that you do not understand critical differences in the use of language and the consequences of misusing and abusing it? Or is it simply that you do not give a damn what results from your misuse and abuse of language?
I remind you of my essay, "The Decline of the Daily Newspaper," and one of the reasons cited in that essay for your loss of credibility and readers. My essay has reached several thousand recipients: academicians, members of the media, and educated persons in a variety of other categories. I have received responses from some of them who tell me that they no longer read daily newspapers for information because what appears in them is so inaccurate and distorted. If the Chronicle continues to lose readers for that reason, until finally Hearst folds the newspaper and you are out of a job, remember that I warned you: Change your ways. Use the English language correctly. Stop prostituting yourselves for religion-based groups. Qualify what you write and print. Become accurate, intelligent mass educators. Or be wiped out by internet providers of information who are replacing you because they present news and analysis in an intelligent, accurate manner that is eluding you, even when you are told what is wrong, because you obstinately refuse to change your ways.
Burton H. Wolfe 