US author lauds suicide bombers
David Nason, New York correspondent
November 19, 2005
ONE of the greatest living US writers has praised terrorists as "very brave people" and used drug culture slang to describe the "amazing high" suicide bombers must feel before blowing themselves up.
Kurt Vonnegut, author of the 1969 anti-war classic Slaughterhouse Five, made the provocative remarks during an interview in New York for his new book, Man Without a Country, a collection of writings critical of US President George W. Bush.
Vonnegut, 83, has been a strong opponent of Mr Bush and the US-led war in Iraq, but until now has stopped short of defending terrorism.
But in discussing his views with The Weekend Australian, Vonnegut said it was "sweet and honourable" to die for what you believe in, and rejected the idea that terrorists were motivated by twisted religious beliefs.
"They are dying for their own self-respect," he said. "It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's like your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."
Asked if he thought of terrorists as soldiers, Vonnegut, a decorated World War II veteran, said: "I regard them as very brave people, yes."
He equated the actions of suicide bombers with US president Harry Truman's 1945 decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
On the Iraq war, he said: "What George Bush and his gang did not realise was that people fight back."
Vonnegut suggested suicide bombers must feel an "amazing high". He said: "You would know death is going to be painless, so the anticipation - it must be an amazing high."
Vonnegut's comments are sharply at odds with his reputation as a peace activist and his distinguished war service. He served in the US 106th Division and was captured by German forces at the Battle of the Bulge.
Taken to Dresden and held with other POWs in a disused abattoir, Vonnegut witnessed the appalling events of February 13-14, 1945, when 800 RAF Lancaster bombers firebombed the city, killing an estimated 100,000 civilians.
The experience inspired his book Slaughterhouse Five - the title of the novel coming from the barracks he was assigned in the POW camp. The book became an international bestseller and made Vonnegut a luminary of the US literary left.
But since Mr Bush was elected, Vonnegut's criticisms of US policy have become more and more impassioned.
In 2002, he was widely criticised for saying there was too much talk about the 9/11 attacks and not enough about "the crooks on Wall Street and in big corporations", whose conduct had been more destructive.
The following year he wrote that the US was hated around the world "because our corporations have been the principal deliverers and imposers of new technologies and economic schemes that have wrecked the self-respect, the cultures of men, women and children in so many other societies".
But Vonnegut's latest comments are likely to make many people wonder if old age has finally caught up with a grand old man of American letters.
Periodically, when (e:Jason) thinks he's bored, he'll come out with such statements. I've learnt to ignore him when he's in this mode. :)
Hm, Liberal Press? Are we still calling the media liberal? When their stories and op-ed's pander more to their sponsers than anything else? Was the phrase 'jew run' missing?
This seems like a journailist, stearing as far away from objectivity as possible, being offended that Vonnegut suggest that people who STRAP EXPLOSIVES TO THEMSELVES are brave. Clearly, it takes a pretty set of rocks to do something like that.
They are verry brave. It takes a lot of curage to belive know the bomb is going to kill you. What if it dosn't for some reason. They belive they are going to heven just like christians who are willing to die for there cause or Japanase pilots who in WWII would fill there planes with explosives and gas and fly into navy ships. The fealing high is just a guess, there is no way of knowing that. I don't know if I completely belive that corportations run this country but they do have a lot of control and give money to canidates who will help them.
Why is that shameful?