"Does al-Qaeda have a charter or manifesto?
In an al-Qaeda house in Afghanistan, New York Times reporters found a brief statement of the “Goals and Objectives of Jihad”:

1. Establishing the rule of God on earth.
2. Attaining martyrdom in the cause of God.
3. Purification of the ranks of Islam from the elements of depravity.
In 1998, several al-Qaeda leaders issued a declaration calling on Muslims to kill Americans—including civilians—as well as “those who are allied with them from among the helpers of Satan.” "

Establishing the rule of God on earth is essentially a wish to return to a theocratic form of government, such as the Caliphate, and to spread that over the globe. That is the danger.

I am not saying that all Muslims all over the world want this. But I think that there are large numbers of people in the Middle-East and everywhere you find Muslims who are at least sympathetic to this world-view, and may covertly help or turn a blind eye to the people who are willing to carry out this agenda.

I think that Al Qaeda and their ilk would be more than willing to use Saddam Hussein and his W.M.D.s to strike at America, because we are the antithesis of the type of society that they want to establish, and hence, their natural enemy. We are pluralistic. We are democratic, despite our flaws. We practice religious freedom. We are tolerant, or try to be as a society. We have a tradition of the separation of secular and spiritual power, despite the fact that our Supreme Court may at times lose sight of that, or the reasons why we have that tradition.

It is at the locus of the two forces, the militantly religious terrorist groups, and the rogue fascist states, both enemies of free peoples everywhere, where the danger lies. If the terrorist organizations join with the rogue states to establish hegemony, then civilization itself is threatened.

That is why we fight.