Hey Mark,
I heard CNN's Christina Quala Lampur interviewing the "face of Britain’s radical Islam" this morning (there is a special on it this evening). I'll paraphrase his comments probably but, "the only hope of Great Britain is the adoption of Sharia". When asked if he believed in Democracy (he is a lawyer in London, not a cleric) for the England, the state he lives in, he sounded off a resounding "no - there is but one way man should live, and that is the Sharia".

Now, I don't contest that in a pluralistic society we should allow people the opportunity to pursue their beliefs, however when they apply their beliefs to all others, and use the term "jihad" to describe the means to achieve it, what are we left to think. You could go with rationalizing that they are limiting it to "intellectual jihad", but is that a western "mirror imaging" of our own beliefs? I don't know.

I'm not sure AQ & like extremist organizations believe they have to have the means currently at their disposal, or that they must have milestones that are laid out in linear fashion. They seem to be much more event driven and believe that it is both their spiritual duty and thus moral/physical obligation to persevere in jihad. In their world the process matters as much as the end state. So while they may not be able to destroy the U.S. in a cataclysmic event, striking at the U.S. whenever, wherever, and however possible is still part of the process - God will provide the cataclysm when his followers on other demonstrate their spiritual purity and resolve sufficiently by carrying jihad to the unbelievers.

Meanwhile, they can still inflict a great deal of damage, both on the economy, our persons and our institutions. Their belief that the process matters is important since we tend to look at the process as something to get to an end.

That is why I'm unsure if insurgency fits well. Insurgencies work towards the constitution of a new state as the insurgents see it (steve is that fair?). While world Sharia could be described as an end state, I'm not sure AQ sees it that way based on how the Taliban behaved in Afghanistan - spiritual pursuits don't end with conquest, or they stagnate. Spiritual propagation is never ending unless for some reason the religion fundamentally changes (maybe like Zoroastrianism) - Marc T could make much better sense of this then me - I'm still trying to sort it out