Their aims... The apparent strategy is to bomb random things around the world. The Middle East is generally racked with instability and they want to go around blowing up strategically meaningless things to...what? Have every first world nation rain bombs on them? I'm sorry if you are one of these, but there's some people who have swallowed the line that this is a "recruiting strategy" for dark people. I mean Muslims. al' Qaeda? ISIS. I definitely mean ISIS. And they are idiots. It makes no strategic sense and even if this was a supposedly a strategy it's already failed multiple times. Who cares about recruiting people when your land is rubble and half your "recruits" are malnourished and under-equipped. World jihad? Are you serious? They can't even stabilize their own land. And they want to pick fights with nuclear-armed nations? What, they didn't get enough white phosphorus last time? I'm not saying that terrorism is entirely fake, but I think it's probably being hugely mis-characterized and blown waaaaaay out of proportion. It's also a nice distraction because if your always focused on what evil Islam is doing, you don't have time to question what the first world countries are doing to other peoples. Global Jihad, lol. I have to hand it to them. They can make a turd taste like chocolate.
Ignorant people make great pawns. Pawns make great terrorists. Terrorists make unstable societies. Unstable societies make ignorant people.
I think terrorism has no real objective; it is the expression of hate and anger from people who refuse to be responsible for their own world- and an effort to punish others, usually the world in general, for their discontent. It's short term reward for the terrorist is a feeling of revenge for injustice more perceived or promoted than actual. It's spreading as a concept, becoming a less violent tactic in politics. just cause all the trouble you can, like a spoiled brat throwing a tantrum and demanding somebody appease him.
There is no singular group of terrorists with a singular aim. Even within the subset of Islamic terrorist groups (you are aware that there are non-Islamic terrorists too?), there are a range and variety of stated aims and purposes. They’ll even often be in conflict with each other, even if not directly fighting. Terrorist attacks aren’t random by definition. The purpose of terrorism in general is to generate fear in a population to try to force political change. It’s not necessarily an effective method but many different groups of people have seen it as the only option to achieve their aims. Well we kind of did in the past (more bullets than bombs but they kill people all the same), but most terrorism in the Middle East is intended to influence regional government rather than Western ones (though that can include pushing for less Western influence). I think you’re conflating different things. Terrorism targeting Western nations is different to terrorism in the Middle East, carried out by different people (even if they’re nominally supporting the same groups) and for subtly different reasons. The terrorism itself isn’t really part of recruiting strategies but such strategies do exist, both for fighters in the Middle East and terrorists in the West, and shouldn’t be dismissed so casually. When have human beings ever been rational? It’s all too easy to dehumanise terrorists (like other horrific criminals) but we can only really understand and address the problem if we recognise them as the flawed and messed up human beings they are. It's human nature to focus on people being violently killed, that’s how terrorism works. It is true that we need much more focus on the wider issues and policies which ultimately lead to such extremes but I don’t think we’re going to achieve by trying to de-emphasise terrorism (that could even be counter-productive), we just need to push harder on the other issues as well.
During the American Revolution, the Brits said that the colonists were terrorists because they used guerrilla tactics instead of meeting their opponents in the traditional open field set pieces that were the way nations did war back then. Asymmetrical warfare is a traditional way for weaker groups to fight stronger groups. You don't really understand what's going on.