While withdrawing from Arabia would pretty much collapse the suicide bombing cycle, that action would hurt our strategic interests more than we would gain. There are many other considerations, like Iran, for instance, that merit our continued presence.
In the end, Islam will triumph or perish. It cannot co-exist with the infidel.
You're right, Duke, and you hit the absolute core issue. Think about the 9/11 hijackers, and their mindset. They launched 9/11 because Islam, as a social and political way of life, has completely lost it's centuries old battle with the West, and is beginning to perish.
It's a desperate, reactionary move on the part of people who see their entire way of life disappearing within the next hundred years, unless the tide can be changed. They don't use suicide attacks because they're winning, they do it because they're in danger of being culturally annihilated.
A war between civilizations is a smart move on bin Laden's part, because fear of change and anti-American hatred will help slow the decay and buy them some time. Our invasion of Iraq was a brilliant move, because we're shaking the dead tree, and helping to force it's collapse sooner. Either way, militant Islam is mobilizing for it's final fight, but one that even bin Laden states will require the intervention of Allah for them to win.
How we choose to deal with the suicide bomber issue is a seperate issue entirely, and should be based on rational assessments of American foriegn interests. But before we can deal with it, we need to know what it is, what conditions cause it to thrive and what can be used to reduce it.
They are fighting because they believe for the first time since the Ottoman Empire fell, they can win the war. That was the lesson learned in Afghanistan in the 1980's.
Islam has suffered centuries of retreat and defeat. Their territory has decreased and they were no longer following Islam's mandate to "take over the world."
So, starting with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (and a little before that), they saw that the fault lied with them. If Islam was on the retreat, it was only because Islam had been compromised and Muslims were living in apostasy.
They returned to a simpler form of Islam. Returned "back to the book" so to speak. (Just like when Christians say we have to return to the Bible to solve our ills)...and it was a return "back to the book" that caused this explosion in Jihad that started during the Mandate period.
So what we are seeing was not started as a desperate fight for survival, but as a religious revival (let me use Christian terminology again)... and it is that revival that is the root cause of what we are witnessing today.
The Kamakazi attacks by the Japanese Empire were a similar effort, born out of desperation. As George Santayana once said, "Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."