So you've got nineteen guys who've been told since childhood that they'll go straight to heaven the instant they blow themselves up. Why is anyone surprised when they do? A quick death for a righteous cause, then you go to Paradise and collect your 70 virgins, and Saddam Hussein gives your parents a nice fat check and maybe a couple of coupons to use down at the car wash. That's not a sacrifice; it's a pretty straightforward quid pro quo.

But everyone's forgetting that in this great country we've got teenagers who will kill their own friends and then themselves for absolutely no reason whatsoever -- and in the full expectation that once they die they are either going straight to Hell or will cease to exist in any meaningful form. That's the spirit that made this country great. Take your sex-for-martyrdom incentive system and shove it, Islamic fundamentalism!

And these aren't oppressed, marginalized teenagers we're talking about either - American teen mass-murderers usually come from comfortable homes, with plenty of food on the table, all the t.v. and video games they want, ready access to guns -- what kind of commitment does it take to throw all that away in exchange for a few moments of murderous anarchy, followed by an eternity of either torment or oblivion? Yes sir, that's the American spirit of risk-taking and individualism!