How can I condemn a suicide bomber?

For fairness this blog entry includes a spoiler for the first episode of the third season of Battlestar Galactica.

How can I condemn a suicide bomber?

At the end of the episode a resistance fighter blows himself up at an awards ceremony killing both cylons, the enemy, and the newly graduating class of the New Caprica Police Force, collaborators. Make no bones about it, this is terrorism plain and simple. Terrorism is just a political tool, nothing more, nothing less.

I’m also left wondering if Duck and Ty’s decision to kill the cylons and the recruits is evil. I know it is a justified act, but because it is justified is it absolved from being evil?

Is there such a thing as justified evil? I often wonder if the United States nuclear bombing of Japan in World War II was justified. In one way they were our enemy, and Japan dragged us into WWII through the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But while the nuclear bomb was theorized in the physics community, and it may have been possible to deduce that production of a nuclear weapon was underway by the United States, I have trouble classifying its use as justified evil.

If the United States had made clear its intent to use a nuclear weapon against Japan, and perhaps demonstrated its abilities for the world, and Japan chose to continue fighting, I believe that the use of a nuclear bomb on Japan would have been justified. But using a radically new weapon on your enemy in a situation where you could have won through conventional warfare? I cannot and will not call that justified.

Going partially back to the fictional world of Battlestar Galatica.

Duck’s suicide bombing, I want to call it justified. But in doing so I would also call suicide bombers against Israel, the United States occupation in Iraq, and the bombing of the Twin Towers on September 11 justified.