Mundane analyses like this always miss a key point: the Islamic State taps into a legitimate hunger in the modern world, and perhaps the most potent force in human history: the will to power of young men, united in faith and vision, with nothing to lose, transcending themselves by marching off to fight for religion, honor and glory.
In reality, it is modern Westerners who live proscribed, mundane, empty lives by comparison, as they work to turn this planet into some kind of grey, mechanized, corporate prison. Jihadists enjoy a kind of freedom and vital existence that most of us only dream about, which is why they win recruits.
To people conditioned by the feminized, secularized, nihilistic culture of the modern West, jihadists are an abomination and an aberration. In reality, it is the decadent West that is the aberration, and it is the Islamic State that is closer to the historical norm. Unless and until these shortcomings of our own civilization are addressed, I expect jihadists to make continued inroads. No doubt something similar happened when the Athenians met the Spartans, and the late Romans came up against Germanic tribes. This is an ancient pattern of history, of revitalization of decadent civilizations by "barbarians", and the West appears to be next in line to learn this hard lesson.
