ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book explains the calculus of terrorism and traces its influence on the utility of political violence by weak nonstate actors, the making of terrorists and terrorist organizations, and their strategies, tactics, and organizational structures. The idea was furthermore to describe and assess how targeted governments respond, how media report, and how public is targeted by both terrorist and counterterrorist propaganda. While Al Qaeda Central still existed as of this writing, the group was a shadow of its past potency. But it was 'bin Ladenism', the ideology that remained alive and well albeit in an even more extreme form within the Islamic State or ISIS, an organization that was after all established in Iraq as an affiliate of Al Qaeda under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who had learned the terrorist trade in Al Qaeda's headquarters and training grounds in Afghanistan.
