Bob,

I recommend you review the book again, you will be hard pressed to find a chapter that doesn't address underlying issues, and the criticality of the government not further inflamming those issues by inappropriately or over reacting. It points out that sometimes the underlying issues are legitimate and other times they're not (Aum Shinryko for example, or pushing for Sharia law in a country for the majority of people don't desire it).

You seem to view the world through your theory of governance, and you tend to default too quickly at times to assuming every terrorist has a legitimate cause based on an underlying issue the government has failed to address. In fact, this probably addresses a minority of terrorist cases. In many cases there is no reason for the government to address terrorist demands/underlying issues, in fact if they did so they would no longer be legitimate. Every situation must be evaluated on its own facts, and not every case will conform to one theory.

For a government to maintain legitimacy, it must effectively address terrorist threats to themselves and their citizens. What constitutes effective will vary on the situation. What I like it about it is it not prescriptive, but rather serves as a thinking man's guide.

This book does a good job of exploring how a government should fight back, and lessons learnt from various case studies.