Yes. I believe this has been addressed elsewhere on the thread.
Yes it does. If someone is both capable of killing themselves and capable of killing others, then logically they are capable of killing themselves whilst killing others.
I don't get it, is this a critique of the media? Are the U.S troops all presented as heroes in the media where you live? The first image I can remember in the media covering the ground invasion of Iraq, was of a U.S soldier firing a GPMG blindly into a village at dusk. When the camera operator asked him if he was scared, he replied: "Nah, this is kinda fun!" The village did not seem to be offering any resistance, except for the occasional scream audible between GPMG bursts.
I think you will find that religion is never the key factor in conflict analysis; religion is never the protagonist, it is a means to motivate, legitimise, and exacerbate the friend-enemy distinction. This role can be filled by any overarching ideology however; nationalism and fictitious notions of ethnicity (such as the Hutu/Tutsi distinction in Rwanda), all just as intangible yet motivating as religion is, have often been used to legitimise the friend-enemy distinction. A benign version of the friend-enemy distinction (perhaps called 'otherness') is present in all human beings, these ideological mechanisms simply bring it to the foreground and make it accutely felt.
This is why I take issue with people who define conflict solely in terms of religion, it is the most superficial of analyses possible and is not in the least bit helpful, except to those who wish to perpetuate the conflict. As Wrydolphin has repeatedly pointed out, conflict is the result of political circumstance. In the Critical Security Studies project, we acknowledge only one consistent cause of conflict: Insecurity.
This statement is correct when applied to many situations of conflict, both today and historically. The key is that you said religion plays a role in 'getting people to act' rather than religion is the protagonist reason for the action.
I think this is exactly what people on this thread are asking you to do. You need to look at the historical events that underwrite the conflict (once again, as has been suggested by Wrydolphin and others) if want to understand why such political difference exists.
I would argue that not only is terrorism war, but it is the perfect expression of 'new war'. I would like to follow up this idea more, but I fear I would move the thread completely off topic. I find your distinction between terrorists and professional soldiers interesting: You stated that terrorists "have to be programmed to believe what their doing is right and just." The same rings true of professional soldiers, and I'm not sure how effective they would be if this was not the case. Some groups that I would also define as terrorists are also "empowered with the job of defending a nation," such as the militant wing of Haofftopics. Professional military operations may also be directed against a civilian populace, and I'm not talking about unintentional civilian casualties, but civilians whose security is directly violated as a result of counter-insurgency measures (also a consequence of 'new war').
I'm not saying that the two groups are not at all different, I was just surprised by your points of distinction.
From your earlier post it sounds like you have military peacekeeping experience, I'd love to hear more about it, if you don't mind that is.
I have agreed with everything you have posted on this thread, except for this one point. 'Terrorist methods' does not just denote suicide bombings, but any method in peace or wartime that incites terror to achieve a particular end. The great powers use both sophisticated and traditional terroristic methods to pursue their foreign policy objectives around the globe (ironically, this includes fighting 'Terror'). Having resources, numbers and money is not particularly useful for fighting 'new wars'; these are the trappings of trying to apply 'old war' concepts such as the traditional realist theory of 'overwhelming force' to a 'new war' reality in which conflict is complex, multi-dimensional and asymmetric.
Lol, you're diplomatic in your own unique way Slip.