You're right, but there's more to it. This is a complex issue that when people talk about candidly most often provokes violent reactions.
I give you an example: I live in a country that has suffered a bloody civil war that involved Islamist radicals. After a certain time, there were people from the intelligence community, the military, and eye witnesses that came forward telling that security forces committed acts of violence disguised as Islamist radicals. This is an old recipe (false flag). The rationale is that other states and local population started to worry about the situation and pushed the local government to negotiate, so the armed forces allegedly burned any legitimacy of the Islamist factions committing things that would so badly damage their image, they'd dictate the name of the game.
There was a debate called "Who kills who?" (i.e: who's really committing this?) and the other old recipe was used: calling the people who ask such questions conspirationist and pointing at their tin foil hats (as if nobody ever used false flag tactics and it was impossible for it to have been the case). Whoever even hints that the government had something to do with that would provoke a dismissive reaction and called a traitor for even acknowledging the possibility or failing to assert the impossibility of the government's involvement.
The very act of not climbing on roofs and saying you're against something tags you as a sympathetic and/or a terrorist, even if you're truly against and adopting a neutral posture for the sake of intellectual debate and trying to have a cold, clinical, approach. You're expected to dance and jump and scream to prove you're against terrorism, or you're a terrorist. Similar to the masquerade in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, or waving flags to show your patriotism. Gung ho and motto.
Now, I'm not very qualified in these matters and I'm not a Statecraft guru, but the same people who are called terrorists in an armed conflict and are bombed in a certain geographic location (say Syria), are called allies and armed in another geographic location (say Libya). Sometimes some people are terrorist in a location, but other terrorists in the same location aren't considered terrorists. Where do people get the idea that Jabhat Annusra is different from Daech and where do they think Daech comes from? They all have a black flag and it may look the same for most people. Can be confusing.
As the saying goes, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter", and it's pertinent it came from the POTUS because if I'm not mistaken, the United States Declaration of Independence is, technically, an act of treason and terrorism against the Crown.
Again, most of the people who'll read that will probably be outraged and think I'm sympathetic or that I don't know what I'm talking about when they've never actually seen a terrorist or been in a terrorist attack. I've outlived half a dozen bombs were on my butt more than I'd have liked (but I had it good, it beats being dead). We've seen what humans are made of inside. I mean "inside" literally. So if there's someone who'd fit the posturing anti-terrorist cliché like a glove, I'd come close. From my experience, though, it's the people who know the least who have the most clear cut opinions on that. It's simple from the outside. They even have more clear cut opinions than the people actively involved, as we speak, in counter-terrorism or intelligence who are more nuanced and think in terms of leverage, positions, weakness, operations, incentives, allegiance, practicality, etc. (This is why many in the Military for instance roll their eyes when they're greeted by too enthusiastic a display of patriotism and "thank you for your service" or just can't understand why on Earth someone is posturing as a tough guy and calling for "killing them all" from the comfort of a sofa).
For the average citizen, a bomb is the end of the world and sets terror. For the entities involved, it's a message. They reason in colder terms that use armed factions as a means to achieve a political goal. States do it to each other, too.
So what's a terrorist? Well, what's a douchebag? For most people, it's someone who doesn't do exactly what we want them to do. For the British, Americans were terrorists. For the U.S., Nelson Mandela was on a terrorist watch list until 2008. What's a terrorist attack? A bomb? Sabotage? Disruption? Killing? All in the playbook of every single Army through covert operations/Intelligence services of every single Nation. These are the things they have covert operations and special forces for. Everyone is a terrorist to someone and all of them think they're the good guys. If you accept that one is true to their cause and think they're justified and that people have different causes, it only makes sense that conflict is bound to happen sooner or later.
Now, this is just one guy on Hacker News who's lived in a country and who could be a terrorist for all we know. But you read books written by U.S. former Intelligence Officers who have decades of experience on the subject. People who know what they're talking about and who've tracked AQ operatives for a long time. They understand the rules of the game. They point out that the discourse politicians have is very far from the truth, but it's the kind of discourse that's easier to sell. Scheuer for instance points out that terrorists attack the U.S. not because they hate freedom, but mostly because of the U.S. foreign policy. Someone can accuse me of knowing jack about this, but the guy who tracked UBL knows at least something about the topic.
We get back to where you're right. The role of Engineers. Engineers are a special breed. I like to joke that if God exists, Engineers are the closest creation to it for he just made an MVP that seriously lacked features (and maybe funding, YC didn't exist back then), and Engineers took it from there.
When the conflict started here, there were a lot of Engineers who took part in it in the start. There were a lot of EE majors, some ChemE and CS majors and they constituted the backbone of the early days. They knew exactly why they were doing it, the stakes, the arguments, etc. It was political and they were the armed branch. Then things got really nasty and the quality of the recruits degraded to the brainwashed who left school in 3rd grade and were in it because, well, they don't know and their recruiter told them there were virgins in paradise (USMC recruiters sell it with sex workers in Thailand to the ones who seem in need. They also sell it for patriotism). I think Engineers got in because they felt they have what it takes to do things.
But here's something funny. Here's an article with an interesting infographic that illustrates the backgrounds of the Intelligence Community in the U.S. pre and post 9/11.
https://news.vice.com/article/doctors-of-doom-what-a-phd-rea...
Do you notice anything interesting?
I haven't read Engineers of Jihad, but Michael Scheuer touches on that in his books and you're saying the same thing: many of these people aren't the ignorant dudes the media make them to be, although their soldiers are for the most part. Many former Intelligence officers direct our attention to why these things are happening.
There's a quote I liked from Mankiw's "Principles of Microeconomics": "People respond to incentives, the rest is commentary".
Here's something interesting to read:
https://20committee.com/2014/09/25/what-if-everything-you-kn...