Suicide Attacks: weapon of the future?

[Sarajevo071]

Human bomb attacks are acts of impotence and they are rarely aimed at invading forces. The vast majority are aimed at non combatants. In Iraq the victims are almost all Shia Muslims. The recent attack in Afghanistan killed one US soldier and 22 others, which suggest that if were targeting "invading forces" he was a poor shot.

A brief comment on the "cultural" battle. One of the significant difference between western culture and the culture of the jihadi is that we do not glorify the depravity that sometimes occurs. By that I mean that people who go on a killing rampage in a high school are not considered someone to emulate and put on posters.

And I don’t say that they should be put on posters… I was just saying that “primitivism” is multicultural thing.

And about other thing. I agree with you but also wonder…

How will they play “game” if they have all those toys and gadgets? Would they be called heroes flying planes and bombing villages and doing “collateral damage” or they will still be “impotent”?

I don’t know. Seams to me, suicide bombings coming from desperation and lack of real weapon systems rather then impotence.


PS.
I was talking about western and islamic culture. Not jihadi.

[Jedburgh]

...figured I'd put this here as well, because of the subject matter - although it has it's own thread in the OEF-Afghanistan forum:

Cheney Attack Reveals Taliban Suicide Bombing Patterns

...Iraqi suicide bombers from such jihadi groups as Ansar al-Sunnah and al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia frequently seek to inflict high casualty rates by attacking soft targets, such as crowded markets. Their objective is to cause as much bloodshed as possible, incite sectarian violence and destroy U.S. efforts to construct civil society in Iraq. Afghan suicide bombers, on the other hand, appear to have different objectives and have focused almost exclusively on hard targets (government, police, military). In 2007, for example, the Taliban have attacked foreign or Afghan military/police targets in 16 of their 22 bombings (in three cases the target was undetermined).

This in-depth analysis of 158 Afghan suicide bombings since 2001 shows that this is no anomaly and demonstrates an important point: in only eight of the 158 suicide attacks from 2001-2007 did civilians appear to be the direct target of Afghan bombers. Further scrutiny of these eight civilian attacks reveals an important fact. In two of these instances, the Taliban apologized for inflicting civilian casualties and in one case a Taliban spokesmen actually denied involvement. In four other cases the suicide bombers seem to have been targeting passing military convoys or governmental representatives in crowds; therefore, the high civilian casualties appear to have been unintended "collateral damage." In only two instances were civilians clearly the target of Afghan suicide bombers.

These findings tell us volumes about the Taliban's overall strategy in employing suicide bombing as a tactic. Far from imitating Iraqi insurgent tactics, the Taliban are trying to avoid losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people by needlessly killing civilians....