People often argue that defending against a suicide attacker is impossible for the reason that the attacker doesn’t value their own life. The problem with this argument is in the assumption that to the attacker the ultimate cost is the attackers life. I would argue that there most be something that is to valuable to the attacker that will make them feel the attack is not worth it. An example suggestion would be the attackers family. If the 911 hijackers thought America would hunt down their family and killed them I would suspect they wouldn’t have done it.

Now this sounds horrific, that’s because it is. We in America and other Christian based moral codes would never hold the fault of a family member against the entire family. I would also never suggest that as a solution or support it. The point to the argument is that in trying to mitigate a risk you most consider the potential cost to the attacker. The higher you can make it the better. Unfortunately when you deal with people that have a different moral framework, like terrorist,  costs are measured differently. When attempting to develop mitigating controls to defeat terrorism we have to be creative in finding costs to the attacker that are ok in our own moral framework but are still costly enough to make the attacker not attack.