I have always thought that if the roles were reversed, and the Imperial Japanese enemy by 1945 had bombed the living crap out of our cities and were just off our coasts ready for the final land/sea/air assault and occupation of our USA cities (and our American women..yikes!), destruction of our Constitution, execution of our war leaders, and what not, that many, many young and immensely patriotic American military men would have stepped forward in similiar such suicide attack options in order to blow up as many Japanese aircraft carriers off our coast, to keep them from taking down our Republic. And with particular knowledge of the Imperial Japan Army’s horrendous treatment of captured Allied Military and even civilians in their zones of occupations, we might well have had no other option than for many to give their lives for the Stars and Stripes and their fellow Americans that way. Have always wondered about that. I also wonder what pastoral personnel would have to counsel (theologically speaking). For the enemy, then, it was a no brainer...you would go to Yasukuni Shrine as a victorious soul for the Emperor and join the gods (sic), but in our Judeo-Christian philosophy, aforeknowledge and willful volition of planned suicide would be an interesting, debatable topic.(Side digression).
sorry folks to change the subject. ... back to what the desperate and cornered Obama-ites might have up their sleeves.
I have sometimes wondered that myself-how would we Americans have reacted if the tables were reversed. I think that, if the odds were stiff enough, many people would consciously give their lives to save some remnant of what they hold dear. This probably would happen irregardless of what their religious and cultural context would be.
But there are instances where our Judeo-Christian legacy can be applied and expressed fully. If you consider your life a divine gift, then you would not give it lightly to a government or creed. Rather, you would work deliberately and forcefully to grant yourself and your posterity freedom from want and fear. Freedom that comes from your own efforts, beholden to none but the Almighty who sends opportunity your way.
I hope that this is what we conservatives, through our tea parties, grass roots activism and sites like this, are trying to achieve. I would not want us to emulate the mindless and soulless fanaticism of those trying to take our freedoms from us. Rather, like our real and spiritual ancestors who faced the kamikazes, meet force with resolve and terror with purpose, with full confidence in our culture and values and its extraordinary capacity for raising the human condition.
Suicidal attacks and sucicide attacks are fundamentally different. Americans have often shown a great willingness to fight in situations where the chance for survival was near nill (at least to a rational person). However, the idea of simply committing suicide as some type of act of honor doesn’t fit into Western values.
To me the Japanese and Muslims are more concerned with ensuring their own death, than harming their enemy. Americans think more along the words of George Patton, “Make the other SOB die for his country.”