The one guaranteed outcome, if you you go down the pathway of terrorism,
is that sooner or later you will become disillusioned.
The fantasies that might have propelled you into this particular terrorist group
can be quite easily crushed by reality.
Terrorists or former terrorists tell me about what life is like juggling the demands of the real world with their world.
It is not the fantasy that so many recruits believe it is.
The first few times I was doing interviews with terrorists,
they were calling me up and as soon as I saw their number on my phone,
I thought "Well, they're calling to cancel the interview."
And it was just this interviewee saying to me "Look John, I'm going to be there, but I'm going to be about 45 minutes late.
"My wife is running late, I've got to go pick up the kids from school and drop them off."
"Can we meet a little bit later?"
It's just a simple illustration, but they have the same concerns, the same day-to-day demands that you or I do.
Terrorist recruits have this idea that being involved in terrorism results in tremendous rewards for individuals.
But the more and more accounts of former terrorists we listen to show that the secret life of a terrorist is
Far more mundane, far more stressful, far more boring in reality.
Listening to their accounts, understanding how and why their disillusionment festered, those are the kinds of stories we have to make known.
If we can build up enough of those accounts and educate young people about the dangers of becoming involved,
Perhaps we might deglamorize terrorism.
