The bad guys' motivation makes no sense and are in no way sympathetic

Maybe their cause is "Black ops casualties need recompense too!"
and they expect the gvt to make up some story about how they died and offer compensation.
Like "secret mission in the nearest 'legal' war"
or "training accident"

I understand his frustration about his men not being recognised and their families not receiving pensions, but I agree, the method he chose made little sense. Taking hostages and threatening to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people? That’s crazy.

It would have been more effective and far less homicidal if he had told his superiors “I’ve written a tell-all book with every detail about every black-ops mission my team has executed in the past twenty years, and if the families of my dead men aren’t compensated or if something happens to me, it will be sent to every newspaper in the country”. But that would be a boring movie.