Suicide Bombers Few and Far Between

There is something rather odd in the field of terrorism via suicide bombing.

Possibilities are aplenty, but few opportunities are being taken, strangely everywhere but in Iraq and possibly Palestine. Why would that be so?

If there really is a lot of people trained to explode themselves in the middle of innocent civilians, where are they? Anywhere in the world, what is preventing them to walk into a crowded market (as in Iraq), or a hotel’s lobby (as in Jordan), or an airport (as in Rome), and pop themselves (into Hell) and some luckless bystanders (into Heaven)?

After all, to create terror one doesn’t have to kill 2,000 or even 200 people. Just a couple of deaths twice a week or more in wholly unrelated, preferably urban environments, such as train stations (as in Madrid) would be more than enough to establish one’s terror group strength and political importance.

The USA and the world economy suffered because of 9/11, but I am sure the collapse would have been far greater if instead of 4 planes in a day, there would have been 4 al-Qaeda attacks in the space of a month.

Such a tactic would also obviate at the second-most immediate downside of terrorism via suicide bombing, namely the need to hide, from police and other security forces, the procurement and management of explosive material and the bomb manufacturing.

And yet, all of that is not happening. Iraq aside, and Israel and 9/11 included the number of deaths by suicide bombing may add up worldwide to less than 5,000 in the past decade. In the meanwhile, tens of thousands have died in car accidents, by AIDS and other curable or incurable diseases, etc..

The best possible explanation for such a situation, is that in reality, very, very few people are willing to kill themselves.

After all, the topmost immediate downside of that kind of terrorism, is that it takes at least 20 years to replace any suicide bomber. Whatever the propaganda or the inspiration, numbers can only dwindle down to zero in the medium term (a fact explaining, alongside the Wall, the recent sudden mellowing of Palestinian terror groups, after the large rate of suicide bombings in Israel a few years ago).

That of course raises the question of how much propaganda we are getting about Iraq?

How many terrorist attacks over there have actually been committed by suicide bombers, rather than far-easier-to-manage remotely-controlled explosive devices?

It may take hours, not months and definitely not years to find and prepare a new car bomb.

Is anybody playing to us the dangerous game of showing suicide bombing as easy and common in Iraq, thereby increasing our fears and willingness to give up civil rights, but also inspiring a whole bunch of untrained idiots to cobble up the crudest of bombs, as in the Glasgow airport accident?

One day, even the idiots will manage to kill somebody, by chance or mistake.