The idea was to get the US to just leave the middle east. And that was a pretty epic failure on Al Qaeda's part. The US is up the middle east's ass a lot further now than then.
Also "they hate us for our freedom" is some dumb Bush era idea. Al Qaeda doesn't hate America for our freedom. Al Qaeda explicitly explained why they hated us. 1) Troops in the Arabian peninsula, 2) support of Israel, 3) blockade of Iraq.
All that it has bought them is death. Their goal was to take down the US and it tremendously backfired, but we kind of squandered that goodwill. If they want to make money they kidnap Europeans who they know will pay the ransom.
> If they want to make money they kidnap Europeans who they know will pay the ransom.
That's not terrorism, that's garden variety kidnapping for ransom.
Second, this is an excellent answer.
If the government wants you to give up your civil liberties and uses the threat of a terrorist attack to get you to give them up, then they have become terrorists as well. However, I don't know if that is the explicit goal or not or just the outcome of a grossly over exaggerated response. I do know if someone wants to get their way they usually just say "terrorism" or "children."
Terrorist attacks are rare. Humans are terrible at evaluating risks.
I'm leaning towards the second. Governments, especially democratic, are complicated systems, and as such a collective failure resulting from many small actions guided in various forms of self-interest seems much more probable than a grand conspiracy. I believe that the US terror actions abroad are just that outcome of a grossly exaggerated response, a failure mode the Government can't find a way to get out of.
We have to ask ourselves - what is the goal of terrorism? It's to force your target to do something you want (a political action) or totally waste resources. Civilian deaths are just collateral damage, means to an end. The 9/11 attacks scared the entire west to the point of insanity, made it waste money on wars and turn themselves into police states. If the terrorists' goal was to damage "our freedom", they most certainly succeeded - thanks to what can be only described as a severe immune overreaction on a societal level.
The right way to deal with such terrorist attacks is to mostly ignore them, and don't get yourself scared. As a terrorist, you have no reason to fly stuff into buildings if you know it won't buy you anything.
[0] - I can now forget my visa.