Jerusalem

PRESS ACCOUNTS OF the classified National Intelligence Estimate have asserted that the war in Iraq has increased Islamic radicalism. President Bush has declassified the document so that people can see for themselves what it says, with the implication that the press has cherry-picked and distorted the report’s conclusions for maximum effect, but the problem here is not just partisan politics. Some people really believe that the war in Iraq is driving recruitment among jihadists, and it seems that quite a few of those people work for U.S. intelligence services.

Obviously a war against radicals is going to make some people more radical–see, for instance, the region-wide reaction to Israel’s war against Hezbollah. But, then again, a papal speech delivered in Germany also served Islamic radicals as a pretext for arson and murder, as well as incitement and sundry radical threats. As did the publication of Danish cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet as a terrorist, the destruction of a Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and the work of Theo van Gogh in Holland, among a host of other “insults to Islam.” And yet Muslim radicals were engaging in arson and murder long before the war in Iraq. So what drives people to such violence?