Why Iraq matters

Last week, I read a couple of chapters of a book by Gilles Kepel called "The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West."
It's a long way from being perfect for sure, but the concept implied by the title intrigued me. It re-poses a question that has not been given careful enough consideration, despite vast amount that's been written about it: what do Al-Qaeda want, and why are they and their sympathisers terrorising the world?
Too often, Al-Qaeda have been branded "nihilists" by politicians and journalists in the UK, US and elsewhere. The reason appears to be to underline the point that 'there is no negotiating with these people.' This is true, but it doesn't tell us much. Just because Al-Qaeda has no concrete demands for those it terrorises (as we were used to with, say, the IRA), doesn't mean that it inflicts horrendous death and destruction just for the sake of it. And no one can seriously believe that Al-Qaeda reckon that a few scattered acts of terror will deliver the global fundamentalist Islamic revolutions they wish for.
So - assuming Islamic states wherever possible and eventually the world over is Al-Qaeda's basic aim - what is their strategy? They are trying to inspire as many Muslims as possible to be "radicalised" and take up the cause. It is indeed a war for Muslim minds. In this sense, it is not at all a war against "The West" or "our values" or "our way of life" or "democracy" or because "they hate our freedoms." Rather, it is an attempt to inspire Muslims to join Al-Qaeda's cause.
How to defeat Al-Qaeda then? ("Defeating terrorism" is ludicrous enough to simply be ignored. Terrorism is a tactic that quite simply will never disappear, given the resources and technology available to the worlds' discontents.) We need to do all in our power to ensure that radicals like Al-Qaeda do not gain the upper hand in the war for Muslim minds. And invading Afghanistan and Iraq, reflexively supporting Israel's occupation of the West Bank (currently being extended under the guise of the "Gaza disengagement plan"), supporting the Saudi government, undermining Iran's democratic opposition - in short, all of UK/US policy towards the Middle East and other Muslim countries, gives Al-Qaeda the advantage. The single most important element of winning any "war against terror" must be ensuring that the terrorists do not gain a support base that will give them the opportunity to operate (such as they have on the Afghan-Pakistani border). And the policy being pursued by Britain, the USA and most other "Western" countries runs directly counter to this fundamental imperative.
The terror, then, will continue for some considerable time to come, unless we wake up to what our governments are doing, and force them to change. That is what it means to live in a functional democracy.