What the Islamic religious bigots want

Victor Davis Hanson:

We've been arguing over al Qaeda's aims since before 9/11. Some take Osama bin Laden's specific complaints seriously. But we shouldn't, as we learned this month from his latest rambling communiqué, which faulted America for seemingly everything -- global warming, high interest rates, shaky home mortgages, and free-market democratic capitalism itself.

Remember that back in the 1990s, he declared war on America for three other reasons: We had troops in Saudi Arabia. The United Nations had imposed sanctions on Iraq. And America supported Israel. Now it apparently matters little that there are neither embargoes of Iraq nor American soldiers in Saudi Arabia.

In 2004, bin Laden objected to our logical conclusion that he instead hated the West simply for its freedom. He posed this rhetorical question: "Contrary to what Bush says and claims -- that we hate freedom -- let him tell us then, 'Why did we not attack Sweden?'"

I think we can now answer that by pointing out that al-Qaida has just put out a $100,000 murder bounty on a Swedish cartoonist who was a little too free in his caricatures of Islam. Note that Sweden has no troops in Iraq or Afghanistan, lets in plenty of Middle Eastern Muslims and wants no part of George Bush's "war on terror."

But then radical Islamists have also threatened Danish cartoonists, Dutch filmmakers, German opera producers, and the pope. All have nothing to do with Iraq or Afghanistan or Israel -- but simply do things that radical Islam finds blasphemous.

So aren't these constantly changing gripes of al Qaeda's just pretexts for bin Laden's larger hatred of Western-inspired freedom?

The truth is that bin Laden and al Qaeda want power for themselves, and use religious grievances and shifting political demands to try to achieve it.

In their worldview, Islam's chance for a renewed united Muslim caliphate was shattered into impotent warring nations by sneaky 19th-century European colonists. They now want to reunite modern Arab nations into an Islamic empire run by the likes of bin Laden and his sidekick, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

And they think they can pull it off for a variety of reasons.

...

What they want is for the world to submit to their weird religious beliefs. That means anyone who does not submit gets the al Qaeda death penalty. They have engaged in the mass murder of more Muslims than non Muslims, but that is only because it is more convenient to kill the Muslims who are closer to their operatives. They would kill us in much greater numbers if they could. Much of their strategy has been based on the reaction they expected from Democrats and they have been frustrated by the Bush administrations response. Now they are somewhat frustrated by the Democrats inability to help them in Iraq.

The Democrats still remain al Qaeda's best hope for success in Iraq and the war on terror. It would especially help them if the Democrats are able to go back to the lawfare approach which puts the US on the strategic defensive. Most policies now supported by the democrats would put us on the strategic defensive which means would be reacting after absorbing blows. For some reason this makes Democrats feel morally superior.