Since before the attack on the World Trade Center, political scientists, sociologists and psychologists have been searching in vain for a reliable pattern.
Not so, entirely - the bulk of political scientists, sociologists, and psychologists have been more concerned with finding a convenient scapegoat - a collective of these, to use the author's accurate term, which may be blamed for the alienation of the radical loser. This scapegoat has to fit with their vested interest in servicing the loser (as the author points out) and with their general political predelictions - that scapegoat is the Americans, the Christians, the Jews.
This is not a small point, because it is precisely the pattern that the radical left, losers in the Cold War, have followed with respect to fitting that loss into their own worldview. It is what has led them to ally themselves with the Islamists, who view them as much an enemy as they do capitalist Christians.
Radical Islam is, in fact, a collective of cultural, military, technological, and military losers, bound together by religion and ideology and funded generously by an oil wealth they had nothing to do with generating. I agree with the author completely in this regard. And, of course, in the fact that they are dangerous.
All of this could apply to the celebrity stalker. Another radical loser obsessed with envious rage towards a winner.
There is, however, a logic to Islamist terrorism. It is the awareness and resignation that the Arab world will never, ever, ever be the equal of Israel or the US in conventional warfare. Terrorism is the only weapon left.