[SampleMan]

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.”

[AmericanInTokyo]

In the Japanese context of kamikaze, they rarely if ever use the Japanese word for "suicide", at least what I have come across are things like "ultimate sacrifice", "supreme sacrifice", "sacrifice", "self explosion", "special attack corps". I rarely, if even once, ever saw the moral-philosophical-tinged word "suicide" (自殺）(but in fact that is what they were, in addition to "homicide"). Interesting, isn't it?