The domino effect was an elite fear meme foisted upon their peoples to sanction the deaths of brown people in often small Buddhist countries that most people from a superpower couldn't point at on a map. In this instance Thích Quản Đức was a Tibetan Buddhist monk who burned himself to death in the streets of Saigon as a protest against the persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnam’s Ngô Đình Diệm administration. It later proved to be the turning point of the collapse of the Diệm regime the same regime imposed on people with the backing of the American army.
I was having lunch with Tim a while back and asked him what he thought of Tunisia before Egypt fell and his response was very interesting. He pointed out that if the suicide bombers chose to immolate themselves like the young unemployed graduate Mohamed Bouazizi who set fire to himself in Tunisia to protest against state oppression, Hamas and Hizbullah may have achieved extraordinary change for Islam around the world.
I'm not sure that blowing one's self up is as tough as setting fire to one's self but the point is symbolically powerful. Never forget that a small group of people around the world have something that the global string pullers will never have. The ability to sacrifice themselves and subjugate their pain for a greater cause. It is this which is uniquely human.
