In other words, it's literally World of Warcraft, except with real weapons. Which is why "terrorists" do such wacky and unproductive stuff.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/51/terrorism_is_not_about_terror/

And if you want some fun, you may note that our own soldiers feel the same. Who you are willing to die for, is not about patriotism, but who your comrades-in-arms are.

I will leave you to draw the parallels to WP. Since its resemblance to World of Warcraft has already been discussed, just paste in and repeat.

The only real terrorists are the government. They're the only ones that are trying to cause me terror.

Indeed, warriors will fight over anything and everything, including the benign creative arts which are there to be enjoyed or not, per one's cup of tea.

They're certainly helping-- them and their color-coded "How much should we be terrorized today?" signs.

But in the end, it's driven by the sort of people who are terrorized when their paper doesn't come in the morning. It's all out of proportion to reality. It's a symbiotic relationship between them and those who use the existence of terrorists to gain political power and/or money. Most of these being (admittadly) in government. Can you imagine Bush being elected in 2004 without bin Laden to help?

Where I live there's a helicopter that circles overhead most nights, looking for terrorists. Nobody could afford such stuff before 9/11, but now money from the Homeland Security Dept for such toys is free for the asking. I don't really know what they're expecting to see. Not the point.

As long as Bush's opponent was still John Kerry I doubt bin Laden's whereabouts (Tora Bora, Guantanamo, or Hell) would have mattered much.

Al Gore would have beaten him had he tried again. A couple of other democrats would have had favorable odds.

Which reminds me, toward the end of summer some people I know had a running bet about whether Osama would make a surprise appearance at the RNC in either shackles or a coffin. Didn't turn out that way so they had to use Ronnie as a prop instead, degenerating the show into state funeral part two. But I had to admit "Win one for the Gipper" was a decent punchline.