What are THEY fighting for?

What are the world's Al-Qaeda-inspired Islamist terrorists fighting for? When you think about it, that's a more practical question than "why do they hate us." After all, there are plenty of folks who hate America -- from Hollywood to Paris -- who have no intention of killing anyone as a result.

So the better question is, what are the militant Islamists so willing to kill and die for?

On the left, the central theory is that the Islamists have wished to punish us for our foreign policy: for coddling Arab dictators instead of pressuring them to liberalize, for stationing troops in Saudi Arabia, and, of course, for standing by Israel.

The thing is, though, we've pulled out of Saudi Arabia and have deposed the Arab world's cruelest dictator, setting the stage for the rise of the Arab world's first true democracy. We're still standing by Israel, but one would think that, in the Gulf nations at least, Islamist terrorists would be pleased with our policy changes if the left's view is correct.

That doesn't seem to be the case.

Today, "Al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi" apparently announced that his Iraq-based terrorist organization has "declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy and all those who seek to enact it.”

Well, that sounds a little different from what the left has been telling us, no?

It almost sounds like they hate us for the freedom we're trying to bring to the Middle East. But isn't that sort of what President Bush has been going on about for a few years now?

Huh. Go figure.