Innocence Gone Postal

It is difficult for us to imagine the desperation one must experience before taking their own life. Even those who have had someone close to them commit suicide, we often hear them speaking rather dumbfoundedly about the matter, with themselves questioning, and rather clueless to the depth of their loved one’s state of depression. Though we see the numbers of suicides in our own country add up every day, it is still a very foreign matter to us, because most of us simply cannot imagine that life could ever be that bad.

When news of ’suicide bombers’ first became widespread during the Iraq invasion we were astounded. Many Americans couldn’t believe the enemy would sink so low as to use their own lives as weaponry in their attack on western forces. Others couldn’t believe how little they valued their lives. To the rest of us who thought beyond the act of ’suicide bombing’, we realized that having been promised the riches of an afterlife in the realm of Allah the value they placed on their current lives was minimal in comparison. The truth is that none of these female suicide bombers are angrilly strapping bombs to themselves and running into the public-square to blow up unwanted foreigners, as much as they are doing it because they are severely depressed individuals, whose life beyond that of the present is much more promising.

The women in rural areas of Iraq, who have lost their loved ones to either imprisonment or that have been killed find themselves in such deep depression they become easilly preyed upon by the men trying to expel the western forces from their country. Because of their lack of rights in certain regions, they often feel as if they have no hope left in this life, and so are willing to take their own lives to help gain access into their holy afterlife.

Click here to read about the motivations of suicide bombers, and why their lives were already over before ever committing the heinous act.