Substitution of a Term

In an attempt to move the focus off the perpetrators of the act and onto the  victims of the act instead, some have urged that the term "suicide bombers" be dropped, and that "homicide bombers" should be used instead. 
 
 In one respect, that of memorializing the dead and injured, the suggestion has merit, but the idea seems to have fallen on deaf ears, and that's just as well, from the viewpoint of trying to understand why these bombings take place and in such a drastic and very personal manner.   Also it could be that the term "homicide bombers" has too much  redundancy.  All bombings of places where people are likely to be present are homicidal, whether they are committed by young Palestinian women with the explosive strapped to their bodies or by aircrews sitting safely in their B-52's high overhead. 

 "Suicide bombers" carries more meaning than "homicide bombers"  because it sheds more light on why the act was committed.   At least it says that normally sensible people felt so angry and desperate and otherwise helpless that they considered themselves to be driven not only to take the lives of an unknown -- to them -- number of strangers but also to add to that annihilation their most precious possession by far -- their own lives.
 
To deny the suicide aspect is to relieve people of any obligation to think about how to end the conditions that lead to such utter desperation, and to act constructively on their conclusions.   In an atmosphere in which only renewed grief, rage, and the thirst for vengeance are given room to operate, that denial continues to take place, no matter what the bombings are called, and that could be one main reason why the bombings haven't stopped being an ever-hovering and terrible threat.