Al Qaeda's goals

Juan Cole gave the following summary of al-Qaeda's military hopes from the 9/11 attacks in his post of 06/07/02 Deterrence and the Bush Doctrine, several months before the start of the Iraq War:

What al-Qaida is hoping for is precisely that attacks like that of September 11 will goad the United States into doing something extremely foolish that will decisively alienate the entire Muslim world. Al-Qaida's constituent parts have been trying assiduously for a decade or two decades to overthrow the Algerian and Egyptian governments and to push Israel back. They dream of uniting the entire Middle East, adding the talents and population of Egypt to the oil money of the Gulf, creating a new superpower under a revived caliphate. They got nowhere, and blame this failure in large part on the United States' strong backing for these states. September 11 was aimed at making it more costly for the U.S. to support the status quo in the region, at pushing it out, and if that failed, at making it lash out at Islam in a way that would, as the marxists used to say, clarify the contradictions. This would create a vast anti-American backlash throughout the Muslim world, crippling the pro-American states and making them ripe for overthrow by the jihadis.

Let's see, I think we can say that the Iraq War has so far created "a vast anti-American backlash throughout the Muslim world."  And for the non-Muslim world, as well.  Does that qualify the Iraq War as an "extremely foolish" act?  I would certainly say so.

Let's hope we find some new approach to avoid the replacing the pro-American Muslim states with jihadi governments.