With terrorism, as with all asymmetric political action, "the action is in the reaction of the opposition," as Saul Alinsky, the leftist activist, put it in his book Rules for Radicals.

This isn't conspiracy stuff, nor impossible "4th dimensional chess" – it's just plain, old 2-dimentional chess. That's all:

Hamas, al Qaeda, and similar groups slaughter civilians – beheaded babies or not, they certainly murdered hundreds and hundreds of innocent, civilian Israeli non-combatants in this one (including an extended family member of mine) just as they slaughtered thousands on September 11 – for a reason, not simply because they are angry or devils. It's a tactic. They are trying to provoke a reaction.

They are trying to make you angry, to make you hate, even drive you crazy. Yes – yes – for the purpose of making the more powerful force (i.e. the United States, Israel) do even worse to their own people, such as getting the U.S. to invade Afghanistan and getting Israel to bomb the Gaza strip. Not that al Qaeda was from Afghanistan, but that's where they were and that's who they knew were gonna get it. (Also, by the way, U.S. support for Israel's crimes in Palestine and Lebanon was a huge part of the motive for al Qaeda's war against the United States in the first place, including for some of the most important pilot hijackers and organizers of the plot.)