Congratulations, you've justified a world where everyone is a hostage to the aggrieved. How do you think that will work out for the not-rich / not-strong / not-smart / not-popular?
It's opinions like this that hold us back from progressing socially - the idea that understanding the motives of a nemesis is functionally the same as justifying them.
"'terrorists' are usually just normal people who have frustratingly little recourse"
is a _value_ assessment.
It is literally a normalization of terrorist motivation.
And, the idea that al Qaeda is motivated by outrage at American or Western injustice is at best a huge oversimplification. And at worst, a credulous acceptance of their propaganda.
Al Qaeda is not a monolithic entity with a single soul. The senior figures certainly have more complex motives, but the junior figures are going to have simple motives similar to the swathes of young US southerners who signed up to defend their country. The GP was talking about 'terrorists' as individual people, not as a theory.
There's a difference between analyzing terrorist motives and using terms like irony or implied hypocrisy on the part of the U.S. -- this is where the line crosses from understanding to justification.
I did not justify terrorism, nor was I attempting to. I am merely pointing out that even a 'terrorist' has reasons for his actions, and we ignore those reasons at our own peril. The CIA has a term for what amounts to retaliation in response to US actions overseas: blowback. It is obvious that if you fuck with a beehive long enough, you are eventually going to be stung. Is the bee wrong? Are we wrong? Who cares? The sensible course of action would be to just stop fucking with the damn beehive.
Unfortunately, it seems that we've allowed our government to get us caught in a feedback loop of retaliation - they sting us, we smash something of theirs. When does it stop? Must we eradicate all of the bees in order to see peace?
