Here's How To Stop Suicide Bombings

The current issue (26 April) of The New Yorker magazine includes a review of several books by social scientists on the US’ war on terror and why it’s failing, both in concept and operation. These authors discuss the variety of methods used against Islamic terrorists by the US and other nations (Britain, Russia, Israel, etc.) in counterinsurgency, both military campaigns and social programs (negotiation, nation-building, jobs creation, etc.). Overall, these volumes give short shrift to one of the primary weapons of terrorists – suicide bombings.

One author traces the “modern age” of suicide terrorism to the 1983 attack by Hezbollah on the US Marine base in Beirut. Another notes that suicide bombings increase when terrorist groups encounter hard targets like American military bases that are impervious to traditional guerrilla-warfare techniques. But little else on this topic is offered in these six volumes, particularly on how to stop suicide bombings.

Since 2001 the story of General John “Black Jack” Pershing’s 1911 military campaign in the Philippines has been circulating on the Internet. As the story goes, Pershing executed all but one of a group of Muslim terrorists, and buried the dead with carcasses of pigs. The survivor was released to report to his superiors how the burial of terrorists would be handled from then on. “For the next 42 years there was not a single Muslim attack,” the story concludes.

Muslims are forbidden to eat pork because it’s considered unclean. Similarly, there is the Islamic belief that if one’s body is buried with a pig, the soul can never reach paradise – and the 72 virgins that Muslim martyrs expect to find there. So if the remains of all Muslim suicide bombers were interred with pig parts, Islamic terrorists would lose their primary incentive for suicide and martyrdom. That’s one way to end suicide bombings.

Historical precedent exists. In the year 828 the remains of St. Mark were spirited out of Alexandria hidden in a crate of pork by two Venetian merchants. Customs officials refused to handle the meat and the remains sailed away undetected. In Venice a basilica to house the saint's remains was built, known today as St. Mark’s cathedral.

Burying Muslims with pig parts has been practiced in Israel and by Britain in its war with Islam. And a few years ago the California National Guard posted a flyer in its headquarters suggesting US troops execute Islamic terrorists with bullets dipped in pig’s blood. It may not be politically correct, but when US soldiers are being killed in suicide bombings, it’s time to drop political correctness down the toilet. Bring on the pigs!