On the State of the War by advisory board to Rumsfeld's Pentagon 2004

Defense Science Board, advisory board to Donald Rumsfeld And Paul Wolfowitz's Pentagon, delivered to Wolfowitz in September 2004, but withheld from the public until after the 2004 Presidential election and only released the day before Thanksgiving (traditionally a news holiday):

The larger goals of U.S. strategy depend on separating the vast majority of nonviolent Muslims from the radical-militant Islamists-Jihadists. But American efforts have not only failed in this respect: they may have achieved the opposite of what they intended.

* Muslims do not "hate our freedom," but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states. Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy.

* Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim self-determination.

* Therefore, the dramatic narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars. American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims.

* Finally, Muslims see Americans as strangely narcissistic - namely, that the war is all about us. As the Muslims see it, everything about the war is - for Americans - really no more than an extension of American domestic politics and its great game. This perception is of course necessarily heightened by election-year atmospherics, but nonetheless sustains their impression that when Americans talk to Muslims they are really just talking to themselves.