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Originally posted by Nic Name
I agree with everything in Whit's post....
I don't think Bishop's attack should be viewed as a suicide, at all.
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There's a pretty severe contradiction here, since Whit said it was a suicide.
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There is no indication that he was suicidal, that he wanted to end his life.
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Um....other than flying an airplane directly into a building.
My own belief at the moment is that Bishop was already emotionally distressed--being an adolescent male can be a very rough ride. When 9/11 hit the fan he was unable to cope with a conflict he perceived between having some arab ethnicity and wanting to be an All-American boy, grow up and join the AIr Force. While his chosen manner of death may have had a symbolic value that he felt linked him to his absent father, I don't see any evidence that he was trying seriously to kill people anyone other than himself. I doubt he looked much further than this being the final act in his own personal melodrama.
In this sense it's rather similar to the Columbine mess, which at least had a much stronger indication that "terror" was an objective.If either tragedy had a genuine political motivation, that message was so poorly conveyed as to pretty much be lost.
I don't see either of these incidents as rising to what we ordinarily consider as "terrorism".