JOE LIEBERMAN UNDERSTANDS what’s going on:

The Islamist jihadist terrorists who wage holy war against us in Iraq and elsewhere represent a system of values exactly the opposite of America’s.

There is no better way to know this enemy than to read their words. The father of the jihadist movement, Sayyed Qutb [KUH-tahb] of Egypt, wrote in 1952, “The death of those who are killed for the cause of God gives more impetus to the cause, which continues to thrive on their blood.” The cause of which he speaks is to “establish a [Muslim] state” that “sets moral values,” “abolish[es] man-made laws” and that would impose, by force if necessary, the Islamic system on “all human beings, whether they be rulers or ruled, black or white, poor or rich, ignorant or learned.”

This is a radicalized, violent vision of Islam, as yet embraced by only a minority of Muslims. Pluralism of any kind – a diversity of views or faiths – affronts this radical minority’s absolutist vision. Their theological totalitarianism leaves no room for individual freedom.

Restoring the caliphate – the seat of secular and ecclesiastical power that existed for centuries across a wide territory – is their goal. You can read it in their writings: They would create a new evil empire, stretching from Istanbul to Islamabad, from Khartoum to Kabul, from Kuala Lampur to Bangkok, and beyond.

Osama Bin Laden is the leading advocate of this jihadist view in the world today, the current mastermind of this malevolent movement. Every American should carefully read his clearly stated words of intention to know why we must defeat him.

In his “Declaration of the World Islamic Front for Jihad,” issued in February 1998, Bin Laden says that “to kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is an individual duty of every Muslim… every Muslim who believes in God and hopes for reward [must] obey God’s command to kill the Americans and plunder their possessions wherever he finds them and whenever he can.”

In his November 1998 “Letter to America,” Bin Laden condemned the United States because, he said, like all democracies, it is a “nation who, rather than ruling by the Sharia of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, chooses to invent your own laws as you will and desire.” After September 11th attacks, he gloated triumphantly that “the values of Western civilization… of liberty, human rights, and humanity, have been destroyed.”

In this war of ideas and values, Bin Laden is the quintessential anti-American. . . .

The prison abuse scandal has caused many to question our moral standing in Iraq and to use it as an excuse to pull our troops out. That is thoroughly unjustified and profoundly dangerous. As I said earlier, the terrorists will never defeat us militarily. We cannot let them defeat us politically.

I’d like to see Lieberman as Kerry’s running mate, but I guess that’s not going to happen.