Right, nor are the Vietnamese, nor are the Indians blowing themselves up in London, nor are the Gabonese blowing themselves up in Paris.
If I remember correctly, the translation is "even a rat will fight if cornered", though today we might mutter something about "asymmetric warfare" in response to "full spectrum dominance".
Sun Zi wrote in about 500BC. So it's not like you were warned yesterday. You've had 2500 years of warning.
Expect kamikaze attacks. They happen. Especially from people who feel they have nothing to lose, and feel under attack from very, very strong opponents.
But they don't. Not from the Vietnamese, nor the Indians nor are the Gabonese. Nor the Chileans and Nicaraguans, as was pointed out in the comment I originally responded to.
And try googling for "suicide attack India" or "suicide attack Kashmir" or "suicide attack Sri Lanka", you'll find plenty of hits.
Just because South Americans haven't done it (yet) (that we know of), it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. Like I told you, you've had at least 2500 years warning.
Hell, there's even the American saying "Give me Liberty or give me Death!"
I have referenced academic study on this topic elsewhere, go read it.
Occupation is one reason the kamikaze may feel like a cornered rat. Indirect occupation is another.
This can be because the perpetrator (USA) is giving weapons to the actual occupier (Israel), because the perpetrator is implementing a sanctions/embargo regime amounting to a mediaeval siege that killed half a million, mostly children (Iraq) or because the perpetrator has installed a "government" in your country to do the occupation for it (Lebanon, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Ethiopia etc etc etc Saudi Arabia).
If you google for the jihadis' motives, you'll find that they mention all three.
Given that the actual 911 attackers were Saudis, I would have thought that US sponsored tyranny in Saudi Arabia would have been their main motive, but it appears that they were significantly motivated by fellow-feeling for Palestinians.
The fact that you do not find their motives "reasonable" intrigues me. Is it their methods you disagree with, or their grievances?
If you think their grievances are not legitimate, does it change when you substitute "gold rush" for "oil rush" and "red skin" for "rag head"?
(By the way I'm not thrilled about getting bombed. I almost lost a friend in Boston.)
The human unconscious is a mysterious place.
> The fact that you do not find their motives "reasonable" intrigues me. Is it their methods you disagree with, or their grievances?
I disagree with deliberately targeting civilians. I also think the worldview of these perpetrators is rather distant from reality.
> If you think their grievances are not legitimate, does it change when you substitute "gold rush" for "oil rush" and "red skin" for "rag head"?
Huh?
Look, this is the list of things you could find "unreasonable":
(a) the jihadi position on God
(b) the jihadi position on US policy
(c) the jihadi method to affect change - violence
Lets deal with them one by one.
(a) is loony but pretty much irrelevant. You wouldn't feel any better if they converted to Shintoism and continued the jihad, would you?
(b) US policy is well studied so you can't really deny its lousiness. Example references:
http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/...
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Systems-Conversations-Democratic...
http://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/037...
(c) you can only condemn the violence if you would not do the same thing in their place.
To me, that means you should be able to sell them a peaceful method as being more effective than jihad. Well, we have a historical record.
The peaceful, liberal, pro-democratic reformers in the middle east seem to have gotten defeated and tortured by the CIA and their local satraps. Like what happened to my family.
On the other hand Jihad seems to be winning in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia and so on.
http://zenhuber.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/preview-bin-laden-dea...
So you don't have a very strong case.