They will go for soft targets, like schools, malls etc. Besides, these jihadi lunatics probably know that they will eventually get killed. They don’t expect to get away with it, and they don’t care, as long as they can take down as many ‘kaffirs’ as they can before they go down screaming ‘allah akbar’. This is a disturbing development, although I don’t understand why they haven’t done it before now...
“these jihadi lunatics...know they will be killed”
You’ve just described the Mumbai massacre. Kill as many infidels as possible before oneself is killed. BTW, the worst punishment to a murdering jihadi is to be taken alive as one of those Mumbai killers was. And the Fort Hood killer has yet to go on trial; meanwhile he is paralyzed and contemplating many future years without his seventy-two virgins.
Justice delayed may be a certain kind of justice in itself, in his case.
“This is a disturbing development, although I don’t understand why they haven’t done it before now...”
There was speculation of these kind of attacks right after 9/11, some speculated that it would be done to further depress the economy. I have often wondered the same thing, why has it not happened? It would seem to be almost impossible to stop in a relatively free society. The only thing I can think of is a recruiting problem, maybe for those willing to die and willing to attack after they have been living in the USA, which is basically paradise compaired to a lot of places al qaeda usually get their dim bulbs from.
Freegards
The main reason is that it is not that easy to dominate 300 million Americans. If a thousand terrorists each take out 30 of us, that will be a loss of 30 thousand Americans to eliminate 1000 terrorists. It's a high price to pay but not so high that we wouldn't pay it. (We lose more people each year on the highways.)
The attack on 9/11 killed about 3 thousand of us. That was about as well as the terrorists might hope to do. Since that time we have killed far more than 3 thousand Al Qaeda, Taliban, and other sympathizers, I'm sure.
From a purely tactical standpoint, I would rather be one of us than one of them. What we must not tolerate is any government attempt to disarm us further in a "misguided" effort to obtain security.