Suicide suicide

Suicide bombing has become something of a nominal battlefield, with "homicide bombing", "martyrdom operation" and other weighted expressions competing for headway.

It has also seemed a perfect metaphor for the extreme of Islamism - pointless, destructive, superstitious, self-destructive, ugly and futile. It is about the most horrific way anyone could devise of accomplishing absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Now it has been taken to what is, in some ways, its logical conclusion: suicide suicide:

Two suicide bombers blew themselves up Saturday in Casablanca near an American cultural center, just days after three suicide attacks stoked new fears of terrorism in this North African kingdom, an official said.

Although a woman was injured, they weren't especially trying to hurt anyone, just to kill themselves:

The official Moroccan news agency MAP quoted an unnamed police source as saying the bombers were driven by "despair" — because of police forces' efforts to break up terrorist cells and successes of recent weeks.

Good for the Moroccan Police.

Perhaps this is the start of a new type of campaign. Oddly enough, it would be far more likely to achieve something - self-sacrifice is always more effective than slaughter.

If so, perhaps the more senior clerics and Al Qaeda figures, whose enthusiasm for personal martyrdom has so far seemed surprisingly tepid when you think of the wonders of paradise they have promised their younger and more impressionable followers, could be persuaded to join in.