KNOCK ON WOOD!
But seriously, with the frequency of suicide bombers in the middle east why have no terrorists tried it in the US yet?
If their goal is to panic the US citizens why don’t they perform the smaller acts of blowing themselves up on our buses, subways, etc. like they have been doing over there?
I know authorities are watching for the big acts like destroying bridges and buildings but what’s to stop a guy from wiring himself up and wandering onto a NY subway?
Giving someone a plane ticket to the continental United States in exchange for a promise that they’ll kill themselves when they get there is a bit of a losing proposition.
I seem to recall a few suicide bombers riding a fuel-bomb loaded with a few hundred thousand pounds of fuel a few years back. They blew up the World Trade Center or the Pentagon or something. It might have been on the news.But I guess that really isn’t big enough to count
This is more of a GD, but I think if they could, they would. The terrorists, for the most part, are still “over there” and huge oceans separate us.
If they have operatives over here who are able to avoid detection, they are probably more valuable to Al Qaida going for big stuff like hijackings and bridges.
No cite… but I’d think “statistics” have something to do with it.
We DID have suicide bombers. Some twenty of them. They hijacked some planes and hit the World Trade Center.
I have no doubt that there are some people in the continental US right now who would happily do the same thing, given the opportunity.
…but to do so would kill how many people? Make how much of a statement? Do how much damage? And alert the FBI to investigate every single person the bomber spoke with, lived with, worked with, or looked at over the past ten years, therefore exposing how many other people?
And this is assuming the militant in question hasn’t simply thought “Screw this. I’m gonna get me a job, make lots of money, buy me a hot car and a DVD player, and find me a big-breasted American girl who thinks my accent is cute.”
I think the OP is getting more at folks who haven’t yet put on their C4 suit and strolled into the Hard Rock Cafe on a Saturday Night.
I don’t think locals would do it just because they’d rather see the results on TV later that night, or live to carry on the fight. It’s hard to feel proud about staging a successful bombing when you don’t get to see the results, the instant gratification.
I would think that it takes a LOT of devotion and a whole lot of “no time to think it over” to successfully do the human bomb. Given the apparent lack of local volunteers the alternative is to export them to the US where they have to be reasonably discreet about their preparations in an altogether foreign environment. It seems a pretty tricky thing to set up if you think about it.
Also, the pinheads that are engaging in this kind of thing in the Mideast are: locals, who know the area & have the appropriate connections for the correct materials; fanatics who believe they will go to heaven for their efforts; and are able to get the deed done before the adrenaline wears off from their moment of inspiration. It’s difficult to get all 3 criteria met over here without a great deal of work and an extremely well-hidden operation to organize materials & volunteers. Now we have a whole government department focusing on just that kind of operation…allegedly.
The suicide bombers that we hear about, mostly in Israel, are the result of people who have lived under the rule of an unfriendly government for a long period of time. The suicide bombing is one of the few tools they have.
Eleusis’s points notwithstanding, it’s still hard to believe that not ONE small scale attack has happened. * Kineahora *.
It wouldn’t even have to be a suicide attack; a pipe bomb in a trash can in dowtown NYC would have a high terror/risk profile. It makes no sense at all to me, so if someone can explain it I’ll be obliged.
Well, IMHO.
There is still some sediment here that the Israeli’s should back off. If we start experiencing the same thing here all bets would be off and a much bigger hand will be added to the mix.
Well, how do you define “small” or even “terrorist” ? There was quite a nasty to-do in the WTC back in 1993, as well as home-grown crazies like Tim McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski. None of these were suicide attacks, but they are certainly acts of terrorism on U.S. soil.
I’ll take a combo of alot of the above as the GQ answer.
Partially it is as BobT says overwhelmingly the suicide bombers that the media reports on are Palestinians killing Israeli’s* there is a less a direct link and no adjacent territory to bring that sort of thing to the U.S.
*440 Israelis killed and 3,000 injured in attacks since September 2000 (updated 26 December 2003)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3256858.stm
In the past 2 years Al Queda has started to do the suicide thing as we saw with WTC, the attacks in Saudi, Tunisia, Turkey were all suicide guys driving car bombs. As all the posters from Eleusis thru BobT make the point, Al Queda operatives, if they here, seem to want to hit a home run & not a one off car bomb outside a NYC Disco.
My WAG: IF we keep frustrating them like we (seem to) have on the planes this week & we will see lowered expectations and may see some Turkey/Tunisia/Saudi style Al Queda attacks here – in a sad/scary way it may actually mean we are “winning” and they have given up the idea of flying a plane into a Nuke plant…but I wouldn’t want to try to sell that ‘rosy’ scenerio to the country or the victim’s families.
Sediment? 
Like I said, a pipe bomb in a trashcan that killed or injured just one person (or even made a loud noise) would have a huge effect relative to the difficulty of the task and danger to the perpetrator.
Small scale attacks, like those made on Israel, would ignite fears that our cities are doomed to a similar fate and would therefore be particularly powerful. I’m not saying it would be effective as a core tactic but it is something to do on the way to the weekly meeting.
At the risk of seeming either arrogant, naive, or both: Mods please feel free to delete this post.
BTW, the implied question in my disclaimer about arrogance is: Are Al-Quaeda et al. ignorant of the psychology of the average American?
Introducing Mad Cow Disease would probably be more effective than a roadside bombing, oh wait…
The US seemed to get through the Unabomber and the bombings of abortion clinics without major traumas to the national psyche.
Even McVeigh’s carnage in Oklahoma City hasn’t exactly had a lasting effect.
IMHO, it means there aren’t very many Al Qaeda members in the United States. If they had the numbers here, they would be doing it. That means to me that they want to use the small number of people they have to do bigger things.
I think the reason we dont see it is because large terrorist organizations want to make a big statement, and it’s not worth them getting someone over here just to create a small, building sized explosion. They’d rather plot and plan and do something major.
Maybe they also think that they have to do something big and major because the US is such a bigger country then a place like Isreal or countries in the mideast. As previously mentioned - the Oklahoma City bombing, while remembered and known by everyone, didn’t have a huge psychological effect (that I’m aware of). For most people, it was something that happened far away as opposed to their own backyard.
I wondered the same thing.
I agree. I’ve thought the same thing many, many times. Seems like the terrorists are going for the big fish here (ie, the WTC). But I fear that if they get frustrated too often not being able to get the big fish, they’ll start to settle for smaller deal.