¶ … Terrorist
It is often said that there is no 'typical' terrorist: terrorism can spring from a multitude of psychological and political causes. Some terrorist groups are mainly political in their aims; others, as was the case with the 9/11 hijackers are primarily religious in terms of how they articulate their ideology. However, the 9/11 terrorists still exhibited a political dimension in their actions, given that they were instrumental in attacking major sites of American power, symbolic of their desire to end American influence in the Islamic world and to curtail the overall influence of America worldwide.
Terrorists can and do come from a wide array of social classes but are not necessarily poor; rather "the frustration-aggression hypothesis" of terrorism is based on "a gap between rising expectations and need satisfaction" (Hudson 1999). In other words, when economic and personal opportunities...
But the 9/11 terrorists were obviously not renegade young men, lashing out at society. They were highly trained, professional terrorists who learned their 'trade' in Al-Qaida training camps and had participated in terrorist activities before. The plot was systematized rather than a random act of violence and depended upon the loyalty of the persons involved to the objective; else the plot would not have 'worked.'
In this sense, the terrorists of 9/11 were typical of the terrorists we have been focusing on thus far: they were not lone wolves, and as insane as their ideology might sound to us, it was articulated via the worldview of a larger organization, and not some sort of private, vengeful act against the world. "The selectivity with which terrorist groups recruit new members helps to explain why…
