Logic of terrorists

ane analysis:

[E]very major suicide-terrorist campaign has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw [from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland].

Another really good article from "Lenin". It is really annoying to hear so much nonsense about these terrorists, especially given the dangers involved. We have to fight against them without the slightest idea of what's going on?

But an analysis on different levels is necessary. Our brains are quite simple and are usually only comfortable with linear, A->B->C thinking and causal relations. But many objects have more complex structures: either composite/multipartite (horizontal structure) or spanning several levels of abstraction (vertical structure). Most of the problems and arguments we entertain come from confusions between these different levels: selective picking, or subsequent switching between them. More on this later.

In fact, the different Qutbist (and related!) terrorists all have different aspects to motivate them:

1. Reactionary: against modern "western" values, ie the post-60's liberal progress faught by about half the Western world!
2. Anti-colonialism: cf above. Military geo-strategy and its discontents. It is tinted by religion, as some sites are more important than others...
   
3. Political: thirst for power and the creation of a global califate.
4. Personal situation: whatever personal motivations come from the particular history of the person.

A mix of all these elements is probably found in most terrorists, with a varying proportion.
The people who go on and on about "Islamo-fascism" just focus on item 3, mostly confined to some of the leadership, add a bit of 1, and attach this to the whole Qutbist movement. But it varies for different individuals, at different levels at the hierarchy, hence the confusions and the spurious debates about "apologists" etc.

Religion binds all these things together, but is not the impulse. The terrorism is not "essentially Islamic" as the racists keep telling themselves. The religion provides the essential objective context, which allows the soldier (not the Bin-Ladens!) to forget his self and forget his life to fight for the "higher cause". Suicide bombing is just the limit form of this selflessness, with its deadly efficiency, as it is near-impossible to stop in modern societies. The religious impulse replaces the nationalist impulse, which is actually another form of "objectivism" (I mean implanting the objective in the subjective).
Islam becomes a new national identity, which is why it's so stupid to force people to choose it as an identity versus the default nationality.