The National Review's Michael Ledeen recently highlighted the flaw in the "insurgency" argument by pointing out that the leading force behind the terrorist assault on Iraq is Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who is neither a Ba'athist, nor an Iraqi. He is a Palestinian Arab Muslim from Jordan "who was based in Iran for several years, and who -- when the West Europeans found he was creating a terror network in their countries (primarily Germany and Italy) and protested to the Iranians -- moved into Iraqi Kurdistan with Iranian protection and support, as the moving force in Ansar al Islam."
This makes Zarqawi an emblem for the multinational, Islamo-fascist enemies of Iraqi democracy, which include, according to evidence, Iran and Syria. They also include Osama bin Laden, whose latest purported audiotape dubs Zarqawi his deputy and denounces Iraqis who participate in the upcoming election as "infidels." Terrorism expert Ledeen calls the war in Iraq a regional struggle -- which it certainly is -- while an Islamic scholar such as Robert Spencer may be more apt to see the fight in ideological terms -- which is also correct. The point is that our troops in Iraq are fighting a wider war on violent, nihilist jihad -- that vital struggle for Western survival known antiseptically as "the war on terror."
Just before Christmas, Georges Malbrunot -- one of two captured French journalists who pegged their release by jihadists in Iraq to France's opposition to the war in Iraq -- underscored the reality of that wider war. His captors "were more driven by Islamic holy war than Iraqi nationalism," reported the BBC. "One of the lessons we drew from our captivity was that we were immersed in Planet Bin Laden," Malbrunot said. "We were very aware that it wasn't the Iraqi agenda that motivated our kidnappers, but the internationalist jihadist agenda."
I think any poll would find Americans agree that a war on the internationalist jihadist agenda from Planet Bin Laden is a war well worth fighting.