A Matter of Time

It was inevitable that we would find out about something like this sooner or later, but here come the al Qaeda suicide bombers. Who knows if they'll make it over here or not, but the tactic has been so successful in Israel that I'm surprised it hasn't happened here yet.
Why is suicide bombing the terrorist weapon of choice? Part of it has been the cult of martyrdom that exists among Middle Eastern terror groups. Ever since Hezbollah pioneered suicide bombings in the 1980s they have been used with varying degrees of effectiveness by everyone from the Tamil Tigers to al Qaeda. Nevertheless, their use has been confined primarily to conflict areas, i.e. Israel, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, and so on. The US mainland has never been hit by a traditional suicide bomber, although you could argue that the September 11 attacks were by suicide bombers (in the more classic kamikaze sense). The suicide attack is seen as something honorable - you are blessed with virgins and other assorted luxuries as a suicide bomber and you even get a stipend paid to your family from whichever group you are associated with. In addition, it has been inculcated in many young Muslims that this is what you do for your life.
What does that say about a society as a whole? The highest station in your life isn't to be a doctor or President or even a basketball player. It's to be a martyr and throw yourself into innocent civilians in order to change political opinion. If the best thing you can do with life is to throw it away, why build a society at all? We're starting to see some of the ripple effects of this policy not only in Lebanon (which, let's face it, has problems far beyond suicide bombers) but also in the Palestinian areas of Israel. Instead of working to create a new society, they're applying the same ethos they've had for the past 30 years - terror is the lingua franca of society. They see themselves as a perpetual underclass and are always fighting for the little man. Until they can see those problems and realize that there's more to life than martyrdom then they will never have a stable society.
The problems this could create for the US are several-fold. If we do have a wave of suicide bombers coming our way what are we going to do? Several movies and/or TV shows have touched on this idea, most notably The Siege. If a Muslim terrorist gets on a NYC bus and blows it to kingdom come and that is followed up by a subway attack in Washington, DC would we be able to keep civil liberties intact for all US citizens or would Muslims be rounded up into concentration camps? Would Posse Comitatus be rolled back to allow military personnel to guard everything from busses to buildings? Or would we just take baby steps like putting cameras in subways like they did in London with perhaps more metal detectors further out from landmarks with staging areas of sorts like what the Israelis have done with the Gaza crossing? I certainly hope for more of the latter than the former, with a clear preference towards none of the above, but I know that when citizens are presented with a choice between liberty and safety, 9 times out of 10 they'll choose safety.