Consider the Japanese during WWII. They were taught that there is no higher honor than to die for the Emperor. Their soldiers frequently used suicidal charges against American forces in the hope of overwhelming them with raw numbers. Their Kamikaze pilots deliberately attempted to dive explosives-laden aircraft into American ships. They even had human steered torpedoes (Kaiten) and explosives-laden motorboats to attack ships. How do these warriors compare to the "freedom fighters" we're describing today? Well, they attacked military targets for one thing, and they were formal members of their nation's armed forces for another.

How about the Resistance fighters in Europe during WWII? They fought a desperate guerrilla action against the Nazis for years. The Resistance didn't deliberately commit suicide in their attacks but joining the Resistance was tantamount to suicide given the odds they faced. They did attack rail lines and power plants but they didn't hit crowds of civilians. Many of them used a super-cheap .45 caliber single shot pistol that we gave to them in the thousands. You had to be practically touching the enemy to kill with one of those pistols which took a lot of courage. Once they killed an enemy soldier, they took his rifle and ammo and used that to kill more Germans. It was a very personal and brutal war.

How about the North Koreans and Chinese who used "human wave" assaults during the Korean War. My uncle was a medic and later POW in that war. He once described a human wave assault where the Americans were on one side of a river and thousands of the enemy tried to overwhelm their defenses. Every American soldier was firing with every weapon at their disposal - quad .50 caliber anti-aircraft machine guns, howitzers depressed to fire straight into the crowd, along with rifles and submachine guns. It was like my uncle was in a trace as he described what happened that terrible day in 1950. It was the only time he ever discussed the war with us. His last words were, "And the river ran red that day."