Suicide Bombing

This is pretty interesting. It talks about suicide bombing and the possibility of its effectiveness as a tactic. It uses a popular video game as a backdrop, but the lessons are not restricted to the game: Whenever I find myself under attack by a wildly superior player, I stop trying to duck and avoid their fire. Instead, I turn around and run straight at them. I know that by doing so, I'm only making it easier for them to shoot me -- and thus I'm marching straight into the jaws of death. Indeed, I can usually see my health meter rapidly shrinking to zero. But at the last second, before I die, I'll whip out a sticky plasma grenade -- and throw it at them. Because I've run up so close, I almost always hit my opponent successfully. I'll die -- but he'll die too, a few seconds later when the grenade goes off.... It was after pulling this maneuver a couple of dozen times that it suddenly hit me: I had, quite unconsciously, adopted the tactics of a suicide bomber -- or a kamikaze pilot. It's not just that I'm willing to sacrifice my life to kill someone else. It's that I'm exploiting the psychology of asymmetrical warfare. "Psychology of asymmetrical warfare"? This is reference to the fact that a face-to-face confrontation between powerful forces (US) and weaker forces (Iraqis) will end in only one result. The weaker forces therefore use different assault tactics to change the dynamics of the combat. This point is well-illustrated in the movie The Battle for Algiers. At one particular point in the movie, the French occupiers capture an Algerian militant and question him on his combat tactics. They ask such questions as 'how can you find this type of fighting acceptable? You put bombs in baby carriages!'. The Algerian fighter smiles as he responds 'If you give us your planes, tanks and bombs, we will gladly give you our baby carriages." This illustrates the asymmetry of the situation. The side with the superior military force talks of fighting "fair". The underdog, meanwhile, develops new tactics to combat the superior force. Terrorism has never been so complicated.