Let us examine the latest episode in the Al-Qaeda audio and videotapes saga. Earlier this month, the Qatari satellite TV Al-Jazeera received an audiotape purported to contain a message from Ayman Al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian fugitive regarded as Osama Bin Laden’s second in command. There is no evidence that the tape was made by Zawahiri, or even that the Egyptian is still alive.

Let us suppose the tape is genuine. So what? If alive, Zawahiri is hiding in some sewer, presumably in Pakistan, like a rat. The message shows that whoever wrote it is in a state of psychological and moral disarray. It reveals neither strategy, nor method, only desperation.

The tactic of mass murder by suicide is subject to the same law of diminishing returns that affects other forms of terrorism. The 19th century Narodniks made a spectacular impression initially because they could kill lots of people while sustaining few casualties themselves. The Russian secret police, the Okhrana, shaken at first, was retrained to think like the Narodniks and fight them more effectively. In time, the bottom line changed against the Narodniks: they had to offer two or more lives to take one life from “the enemy”. Like any other enterprise with a bad bottom line they were driven out of the market.

Later, the same thing happened to the Anarchists, whom Chesterton saw as a menace to last a thousand years. They didn’t. They, too, remained in business for as long as they could kill more and die less. When that equation was reversed, they disappeared. More recent terrorists, from the air pirates of the 1960s to the Marxists of the 1970s produced similar experiences. As the cost of hijacking ‘planes rose for the pirates, they were driven out of the market. The Red Brigades, the Red Army Faction, the Bader-Meinhof gang, and other leftist groups, also went under when they began to lose more while killing fewer of the “enemy”.

What about suicide bombings? Tamil terrorists in India and Sri Lanka developed the new form of suicide murder. Initially, the method had big impact. They killed one Indian prime minister and one Sri Lankan president. Over the years, however, they, too, began to die more and kill less, making their enterprise unsustainable. Suicide bombings came to the Middle East in the 1980s. At first, it proved profitable: fewer than a dozen Lebanese “volunteers” killed more than 400 Westerners, including 300 US Marines and French paratroopers. By the 1990s, however, with the political and human cost of suicide murder rising for its perpetrators, the venture was no longer profitable.

Later, suicide attacks was introduced into the Palestinian territories and, from 1999 onwards, used against Israel. The new method reached its peak in 2001 when each suicide bomber killed almost nine Israelis on the average. The kill-die ratio has continued to change against the bombers. The average for the past 18 months is three Israelis killed for one suicide bomber. But that is not the full picture. Each suicide attack invites Israeli retaliation in which relatives and friends of suicide bombers and their manipulators are often killed.

What about suicide attacks against the US and its allies? Saudi Arabia and Morocco were attacked because they were soft targets. Both are among the most open countries in the region, with no pervasive police presence, as is the case in some other Arab countries. But even then the kill-die ratio is not encouraging for the terrorists. The terrorists lost 28 men and killed 47 people in the two attacks. Compared to what the terrorists had achieved in attacks against the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania — losing 12 men and killing 263 people — the latest attacks represent poor investment for terrorists.

Suicide murderers reached their peak on Sept. 11. 2001 with attacks against New York and Washington. The kill-die ratio was one to 160 in favor of the suicide-murderers. But even that is not the full picture. Since the 2001 attacks, the US and its allies have retaliated. Thousands of would-be suicide bombers have been captured in some 20 countries.

In the final analysis, terrorism, regardless of the methods used, is not a sustainable enterprise. Even the most successful terrorist organizations end up either by rallying to the system in place or by being wiped out.