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This book examines terrorism as a strategic choice that is made carefully and deliberately by fundamentalist actors that carry out violent acts that cause fear and intimidation among all groups of the people. Notoriously, the purpose of such intimidation is to exercise pressure on governments to change their policies and achieve the whims of terrorists. Since terrorism per se is a carefully studied strategy, it is also a mental choice, although its consequences may dance to the tune of reason and logic, and affiliated supporters are rigid and priggish fanatics.
The book charts a series of different strategic scripts at play in terrorist behavior, including survival, mobilization efforts for a grassroots support base, and the grinding attrition of a long terrorist campaign spearheaded by protracted confrontations and battlefields, snowballing beyond the pale. The theme that runs repeatedly across all the organizations is the unbridgeable existing gap between the strategic vision of terrorists and what actually unfolds over the course of time. Regardless of which script terrorists adopt, they often desultorily bungle and fall short of achieving their political ambitions. Yet, despite resounding frequent failure they sustain, they repeatedly use the same strategy; people continue to join such groups, committing mindless acts of violence to regrettably intimidate and stoke fear among safely settled people.