I'll rehash something I said on another thread. The purpose of terrorist activity is to terrorize civilians. You don't really do that by killing the military. You do that by killing indiscriminately--and if there are children and women in the group, so much the better from a terrorist point of view. The response from governments is fast and often causes divisions within the country that was attacked. It happen in Quebec with the FLQ, it happened in the USA with the 9/11 attacks, and it may happen in Spain. Governments react to reassure their respectyive citizens, but sometimes they get a little 'hard' in the way they respond.

I think people ought to examine whether or not that is the REAL goal (strategic goal) of terrorism. The tectical stuff is straight forward. But response by governments can be predicted, also. Look there a bit more, IMO. Just a thought.