There are those who believe that Al-Qaeda is hell-bent on killing Americans.  They see Al-Qaeda as a militant group of mad Taliban jihad terrorist who are out to kill all Americans at any opportunity.  That may sometimes seem the case on the surface but if you really pay attention to what they do and especially what they don’t do you might come to a somewhat different conclusion as I have.

First of all it would be a gross underestimation to assume that the leaders of Al-Qaeda are crazy madmen.  They are quite sane and very rational people.  They do not blow themselves up as human bombs.  They let other less sane and rational people, who have lost loved ones as casualties of our weapons, blow themselves up out of hate.  They may hate us but their actions are very measured and well planned and executed to gain the greatest effect of demoralizing us using whatever crude weapons they have at their disposal including human suicide bombers against the most powerful high-tech armed nation in the world.  Their goal is to neutralize us, not annihilate us.  They know annihilation is not realistic.  They want to wear us down to get us out of what they consider their lands.

If they were truly mad they would have try far more suicide attacks on us here.  We have experienced far more terrorism from our own citizens in mass shootings almost every year than suicide attacks on U.S. soil by Al-Qaeda terrorist since 9/11/2001.  It isn’t because of better security because it is so easy to get people illegally across our borders and so easy to buy guns and make or get powerful explosives.  All they have to do is get on one of our busy subway systems or attend a crowded sports event or go to a large and crowded shopping mall or go to a famous bridge or structure, etc. and blow it up with dynamite, C4 or any other of the other powerful explosives carried by a suicide bomber or pack in a van.  But in fact they haven’t since 9/11.  The last Islamic terrorist action here was the Boston Marathon bombing which was not the work of Al-Qaeda.  If it were it would have been much better executed and far more deadly.  The point is that they could have done so if they wanted many times but they haven’t.

So if they hated us so much why haven’t they done more since 9/11?  The U.S. was already hunting down the terrorist of 9/11 so what did they have to lose?  I think they had determined that such actions would simply make us more determined to stay on their soil and fight them.  So they decided to concentrate such activities where there is already fighting going on on their soil.  9/11 had its intended effect and more.  I believe that they did not intend to bring down the twin towers, just to damage them and kill civilians.  The collapse of the towers was just as much a surprise to them as it was to us and had an even greater impact on us.  They knew that simply the threat of terrorism will cost us much tax dollars in homeland security and added stress and inconvenience to millions of our lives at airports and other activities where security is elevated due to 9/11.  This shows cunning and rational minds at work.  They are not simply after our blood.  They are after our morale.  They want to demoralize and wear us down so we will leave the Near East and Afghanistan.

Their interests lie in spreading their own form of Islam throughout the Middle East as are the interests of other Islamic people to spread their form of Islam.  So they will be embroiled in wars with other Muslims in that region for years to come.  It is in man’s nature to fight, as it is in other species, to claim their territory.  Only civilization has socialized most of fighting out of man though we still express it in such sports and movies as foot ball and ‘The Terminator’ and in taking sides in Congress and in military actions such as in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I believe that if our military were to leave the Near East and Afghanistan and that they felt we were no longer a threat to them then they would leave us alone.  That is really all they want of us, not to have the U.S. as a threat to them so they can pursue their real agenda of fighting other Muslims to spread Al-Qaeda throughout that region.  The problem they will have is converting other Muslims to their way of belief.