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From: wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin )
Newsgroups: net.suicide
Subject: Re: misc. ramblings
Message-ID: <1746@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 26-Sep-85 14:56:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.1746
Posted: Thu Sep 26 14:56:43 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 1-Oct-85 09:14:38 EDT
References: <199@ikonas.UUCP>
Reply-To: wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin (DRXAL-RI) )
Organization: USAMC ALMSA, St. Louis, MO
Lines: 27

One area regarding sucide which I have never seen discussed anywhere is
that a person who has determined to suicide must be a very valuable
resource. It is hard to get someone to give up their life in order to do
something that can't be done any other way; it takes a lot of
conditioning so that a soldier will perform a necessary act though there
is a high probablility that he will be killed doing it, or for a
religious person to become a martyr to their cause.

If someone is going to kill themselves anyway, they can be most valuable
to any of many possible organizations, movements, or agencies by
performing some sort of "suicide mission", if they are stable and
rational enough to be capable of completing it. I'm sure this last
factor eliminates most candidates -- by definition, we have already said
that being suicidal does not allow you to be considered "rational". If
we can get around that, and admit that there are those who have
rationally decided that it is better to die than live, for whatever
reasons they might have, they could be convinced to conduct their
suicide in a manner that fills some other requirement. (Usual
motivations here would be financial payments to loved ones or the like.)

The traditional role, of course, is that of assassin. It is an old
truism that there is no way to prevent an assassination if the attacker
is willing to trade his/her life for that of the subject. Considering
the number of suicides, I am surprised that there are not more
assassination attempts than there are.

Will