Pat Brown, a criminal profiler, distinguishes between soldiers and terrorists. She notes that terrorists are often damaged people who need to cause others to hurt as they do.
"A terrorist is not a psychotic; he is not some deranged lunatic. If he grew up with some kind of a family life and social values, he may be a soldier who believes in defending his country. If on the other hand he has spent his youth as an orphan in an all-male refugee camp being educated by a fundamentalist mullah with war as the only past, present, and future life he has known, knows, and will know, he is so seriously disaffected that he may well be as psychopathic as a serial killer or mass murderer. He wants to kill; he wants to cause pain; and he wants to 'matter' in this world, if only for a moment, and only as a destroyer. Regardless of where the terrorist ranks on the soldier/psychopath continuum, dying gloriously is far better than living a life that is unrecognized and undistinguished."
Criminal Profiling Agency: The Sexual Homicide Exchange
"A terrorist is not a psychotic; he is not some deranged lunatic. If he grew up with some kind of a family life and social values, he may be a soldier who believes in defending his country. If on the other hand he has spent his youth as an orphan in an all-male refugee camp being educated by a fundamentalist mullah with war as the only past, present, and future life he has known, knows, and will know, he is so seriously disaffected that he may well be as psychopathic as a serial killer or mass murderer. He wants to kill; he wants to cause pain; and he wants to 'matter' in this world, if only for a moment, and only as a destroyer. Regardless of where the terrorist ranks on the soldier/psychopath continuum, dying gloriously is far better than living a life that is unrecognized and undistinguished."
Criminal Profiling Agency: The Sexual Homicide Exchange