Much fuss has been made about the most recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). Amongst other things, the document contends the war in Iraq has become the “cause celebre’ for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U. S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. ”Perhaps this is the 2006 election’s equivalent of the overlooked weapons cache a few days prior to the 2004 contest? Remember how all that false display of anger –– “How could we not have found every piece of ammo the enemy had?” –– went away immediately following Senator Kerry’s concession speech?

No, this report is a bit more serious than that; not for what it reports, but for what it explains about the American psyche. First let us go over a prerequisite: If Iraq is making jihadists angrier, then it must obviously be a part of the paradigm we call the “war on terror” –– a suggestion many Americans now reject. The common refrain would be that Iraq only became part of the terrorist problem after we went in and riled up the hornet’s nest. We are to assume the world’s most wanted terrorists –– Abu Abbas, Abu Nidal, Abdul Rahman Yasin, amongst others –– were not in fact terrorists at all, nor were they operating in Iraqi government offices. The logic gets sillier: Hamas only kills Jews and Abu Sayyaf and the GSPC are apparently not “al Qaida enough” to render Iraq a true state sponsor of terrorism during Hussein’s reign. (Oh, and of course, the secular Saddam wasn’t supposed to be mingling with these religious nuts anyway.)

Alas, at present, the jihadist is certainly a reactionary opponent. But this wholesale reactionism is, first, to be expected, second, nothing to be ashamed of, and third, just as inclined to be a result of encroaching modernity and globalization as it is with American military maneuvers. The notion that the enemy is opposed to what we are doing, and that it is somehow a bad thing for this to be the case, is just so beyond the pale of logic I do not really know what to say. Are we to be pursuing policies which are compatible with Salafism, which abide by shari’a, which bin Laden himself agrees with?

This idea of “radicalizing the terrorists” has officially become the third pillar of counterterrorism absurdity (the other two being our weird aversion to “regional instability” and our insistence that only ideological clones cooperate with each other against Western interests). I’m not quite sure if it is postmodernist self-loathing, political posturing, or just old-fashioned simplemindedness that blames our own resistance to terrorism as the cause for it. Support for Israel, troops in Arabia, bombing during Ramadan, Marines in Baghdad –– whatever tactics or strategies we employ against this fascistic neurosis is undoubtedly going to enrage the indoctrinated masses. And why is that? Is it because the likes of Dr. al Zawahiri and Emir bin Laden only oppose what we do and not who we are? Is it because they realize, quite unlike the relativist circles that blame the West for Islamic terrorism, that what we do is directly intertwined with who we are?

Past literature is one of the greatest tools at our disposal if we are to truly understand how our Islamist opponents think, how they view the world, their disapproval with the United States, and why, or why not, we should even give a damn about their dissatisfaction at all. It should be noted that the theological hero for most of the al Qaida leadership, particularly Ayman al Zawahiri, was and still is, the famous Egyptian theologian Sayyid Qutb.

As an adventurous and curious teacher, Qutb traveled to Greeley, a small Colorado town, in 1949 to study curriculum at what is now the University of Northern Colorado. Qutb’s experience in suburban Greeley ignited a flame of passion in his heart and mind that to this day influences top policymakers both in Washington and in the Arab world. Upon his return from America, Qutb’s abrupt radicalization inspired a whole wave of Islamic fundamentalist thought, with the subsequent empowerment of the Muslim Brotherhood, which, over time, led to the rise of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and later the birth of the Egyptian wing of al Qaida.

< br> What enraged a humble Muslim schoolteacher to this extent? In his own work, The America I Have Seen, Mr. Qutb’s own characterization of events is astounding. Qutb dissects the materialistic aspects of Western culture, claiming in a sense Americans are blind sheep imprisoned in a notion we call “freedom. ”In Sayyid’s view, as with most Salafist and Islamist philosophers, true freedom can in fact only be genuine in a state of complete and total submission to God. Throughout his writings, Qutb chastises everything from American teenage males enjoining the “brutish” events of football and high school wrestling –– which condone “muscular strength” and “primitiveness” –– to the vanity displayed in the green front lawns decorating the exterior of Greeley’s townhouses. To Qutb, the proverbial Wally Cleaver represents all that is wrong with the un-Islamic and prosperous West. Rowdy homecomings and varsity jackets are a no-no. A handyman akin to Bob Villa who waters his plants and makes his property prettier, and by default more valuable, appeals to the Islamist zealot’s raw disdain for covetous self-empowerment.

Lest we forget the Islamist’s fear of Western women. As a chaperone for a school dance, held in the basement of a local Greeley church, Qutb watched in horror at the “tapping feet” of girls, who were aware of and enjoyed their “seductive capacity. ”How dare such innocent teenage promiscuity –– “arms wrapped around waists,” in his words –– be allowed to continue unabated without the knowledge or consent of a government cleric? To Qutb, secular society, value systems and morality not defined by the religious clergy of the state, and the concept of individualism were the epitome of evil.

< br> This story explains far more than anything in the recent NIE. And it rests within a simple truism: al Qaida, and its like-minded affiliates, have and will continue to oppose U. S. foreign policy, have and will continue to get madder and angrier as we further advance that policy. They are inherently opposed to what we do because they are inherently incompatible with who we are. And that’s a good thing; something, one would think, we should all be quite proud of. If such totalitarians were in general lockstep agreement with our doings, wouldn’t that be a source of shame and grounds for introspection? If we recognize that withdrawing from Somalia, for example, pleased bin Laden and al Qaida, why do we not connect the dots to the corollary? If doing what they like is bad, why are we ashamed to admit that doing what they dislike is good?

Think for a moment of the more ideological aspects of what the United States has accomplished, or tried to accomplish, in the last five years. We have replaced Taliban paradise with Karzai. We have empowered the despised Shi’a and Kurds, proportional to the size of their population, in Iraq. We have formed stronger ties with a consensually-governed Israel. We have pushed for secular reforms, pleaded with the Saudis to allow their women to drive, demanded that Mubarak release democrats, defanged Libya, coerced Pakistan to capitulate, and obliterated most of the al Qaida hierarchy.

In addition, with our overthrow of the Middle East’s two most horrid governments, we have begun to release a new political and social dynamic, a revolutionary system of sorts, that not only champions the vote over the strongman and the validity of a constitutional piece of paper over tribal loyalties, but also requires the blood and toil of Arabs and Muslims who deem it worthy to die for such ideals. To date, we have witnessed the enlistment of over a third of a million Iraqi and Afghan nationals to fight alongside Western forces against their coreligionists and countrymen. Often overlooked, this is an astonishing statistic in and of itself.

Thousands of these brave men and women have died. And yet no Senate commission or committee promulgates the notion that, more important than creating terrorists, we have created far more allies in arms which the success of the larger mission singularly depends on. The only two Muslim states in the Mideast that war against terrorists –– both under democratic consensus and without triangulation –– are in fact Iraq and Afghanistan. This fact alone morphs the entire “they view us as occupiers and not as liberators” argument into both silly and irrelevant; if they’re fighting and dying in droves, on our side, against their brethren who don a more fascist creed, who cares how they “view” our intervention? Their actions make it quite clear. The United States does not and should not require strict obedience or gracious subservience of new friends and emerging democracies.

This new corridor may seem idealistic, and it may be messy at present, but it is vastly more ethical than the cynicism in propping up a friendly autocracy in Tehran (1953), protecting a brutal regime not worthy of protection in Riyadh (1991-2003), and falsely promising aid to, and then ignoring pleas for aid from, dissidents fighting for freedom in northern and southern Iraq (1991). To apply police logic –– “Why isn’t crime down if law enforcement is up?” –– to ideological warfare is foolhardy. It is analogous to complaining to MacArthur that more Japanese were under arms in 1945 than 1942, whining to Truman that Iwo Jima was bloodier than Midway, and chastising Allied efforts as helpless at the Rhine after previous successes. Bellyaching over “more terrorists” is comparable to al Qaida admitting defeat due to high enlistment and retention rates in Western militaries.

Rather than fret over how many of “the enemy” there is –– and how much we’ve angered them or hurt their feelings–– we should instead worry if we are reaching our regional and strategic objectives faster than they are. By all accounts, however untidy and chaotic, we are in fact connecting the Middle East to the rest of the world –– economically, politically, culturally –– faster than the Salafi jihadists are disconnecting it. This novel doctrine will irritate anyone who does not wish to see new states emerge across Mesopotamia and the Hindu Kush, which, at least in theory, may explain why the majority of the victims of jihad since 2001 have been of Iraqi and Afghan nationality.

But why do we still fail to capture the mindset of the Muslim militant? Why are we more concerned about what they think of us than we of them? Why do representatives such as Bill Frist, à la Colin Powell in 2001, suggest we “incorporate” Taliban brownshirts into constitutional Afghan government? Was that not the situation in Afghanistan prior to the war? Why do we damn ourselves, in hindsight, for ridding post-Saddam Iraq of Ba’athist institutionalism? Why do we aim to please those who proudly claim to be opposed to democracy –– an idea thousands of Iraqi and Afghan allies have died for –– while attempting to accommodate, by empowering politically, those our soldiers were sent to overthrow originally?

Why do we not give pause when a bin Laden quotes a Chomsky or a Moore? Why do al Qaidist complaints range from our killing them to our lack of campaign finance reform? Could it be true that those who butcher kindergarteners, topple skyscrapers, and behead journalists are really just opposed to the way in which we conduct our affairs –– and not our affairs altogether? Is Sayyid Qutb’s lunacy, and the strict adherence to it from our enemies, simply a fantasy?

For years, an author and Iranian dissident Amir Taheri has tried to answer these questions. In doing so, he finds himself ascertaining obscure jihadist literature and quoting it verbatim. A particular document, written by known al Qaidist Yussef al Ayyeri (long since killed), and entitled The Future of Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula after the Fall of Baghdad, explains in great detail the rogue Islamist’s most inner fears. Apparently al Ayyeri contends the world has always been in a state of “perpetual war” between “belief and unbelief.” Unbelief, al Ayyeri continues, has challenged belief (Islam) in various forms throughout history; first as modernism (which ended the caliphate and defined borders territorially), second as nationalism (which redefined Muslims as Turks, Arabs, Persians, etc. ), and third as socialism (which included secular pan-Arabist thought and atheistic Marxism).

But in continuing to read Yussef al Ayyeri, we see echoes of Sayyid Qutb. What, in Mr. al Ayyeri’s opinion, is the most threatening concoction of unbelief? What, in his estimation, challenges al Qaida’s pretenses to the bone? Late Night jabs and the duplicitous World of Gray often rebuke presidential Texan jargon like “freedom haters,” but Yussef’s most intimidating and menacing challenge to Islam is, in his words, “secularist democracy.” Take this admittance and compound it with Abu al Zarqawi’s declaration of war against the “evil principles of democracy,” or of Dr. al Zawahiri criticizing the elected governments in Baghdad and Kabul as “stooges” and “Zionist puppets.”

According to the al Qaida author, democracy brings with it a host of “seductive capacities.” Ahem, Qutb, anyone? Free governance, in this jihadist’s view, equates to evil concepts such as man-made laws, constitutionalism, gender equality, and economic prosperity, which, al Ayyeri worries, may make Muslims “love this world (and) forget the next world. ” How will al Qaida convince young, impressionable Islamic males to strap on the suicide-vest when he can get his Master’s, make six figures, and work for a firm or technology conglomerate? As with Sayyid Qutb, Yussef al Ayyeri’s dilemma can best be understood by reading his own text. Most are aware of their disdain for women, inventiveness, innovation, modernity, and pluralism. But when al Qaidists worry that individual economic success will make their coreligionists “reluctant to die in martyrdom,” does this mean the jack-boots in Waziristan’s cave complexes are declaring war on foreign direct investment, the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund as well? –– can it –– come any more backward and perverse than this? In the spirit of recanting over Iraq, how does this now-rotting Yussef fellow end his telling thesis? “If democracy comes to Iraq, the next target would be the whole of the Muslim world.”