The radicalization preceded the Iraq war.
"To understand why more and more Muslims are becoming radicalized, one can look to the original currents that fed into the violent Islamic extremism of the 1980s and '90s, culminating on September 11, 2001. Along with a majority of the 9/11 hijackers, Osama bin Laden is a Saudi who embraces the fundamentalist Wahhabi version of Islam, puritanical in its strictures and extremely intolerant of nonbelievers."
FRONTLINE/WORLD . Canada - The Cell Door . Reversing Islamic Radicalization . PBS
I guess that puts a stake through the heart of your argument.
Then how would you explain why AQ never bothered with Iraq before it's invasion, which split the two major Iraqi factions of Shia and Sunni? If their intent was to slither into any region where Muslims were pissed off going back 30 years, Iraq should have been ripe for recruitment. Oh wait! Bin Laden DID offer to help Saddam Hussein stave off another invasion by Iran, and SH said thanks but no thanks. Al Qaeda only appeared in large numbers AFTER the U.S. invasion and successfully recruited the sudden minority, which was once the majority, the Sunnis. It's a classic Qaeda MO.
Numerous mistakes.
"Bin Laden DID offer to help Saddam Hussein stave off another invasion by Iran, and SH said thanks but no thanks." Documentation?
On the contrary, "Saddam Hussein rebuffed meeting requests from an al-Qaeda operative. The Intelligence Community has not found any other evidence of meetings between al-Qaeda and Iraq."
Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda link allegations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In your statement "If their intent was to slither into any region where Muslims were pissed off," you miss the point of radical Islam. There are many different groups of jihadists, some like Al Qaeda are internationalst, interested in a caliphate.
Some are nationalist, such as we see in Mehsud and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
As far as appearing in Iraq, 90% of the fighter in AQ Iraq were Iraqi, although leadership was mostly foreign fighters."Al Qaeda In Iraq is part of the global al Qaeda movement. AQI, as the U.S. military calls it, is around 90 percent Iraqi. Foreign fighters, however, predominate in the leadership..."
Al Qaeda In Iraq
The ideology is so strict, that countries that control the religious establishment are able to isolate them as deviant. So Saddam's Baath secular party had a leg up, as did the Saudi royal family.
The point is, the radicals enter, less where "Muslims were pissed off" than were there is weakness or a power vacuum.
You need to rework your view of the history of the region, and incorporate items such as:
"Al Qaeda's ideology is the lineal descendant of a school of thought articulated most compellingly by the Egyptian revolutionary Sayyid Qutb in the 1950s and 1960s, with an admixture of Wahhabism, Deobandi thought, or simple, mainstream Sunni chauvinism, depending on where and by what group it is propounded."
Al Qaeda In Iraq
And the following:
King Abdel-Aziz was the founder of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He found himself battling the Ikhwan, a tribal religious militia of extremist Wahhabibs. This was in the 1920's. An alliance between Abdel-Aziz and the family of Mohammad bin Abdel-Wahhab resulted in the conquest of what is now the kingdom, and the kingdom assumed he religious preference of Abdel-Wahhab as far back as the start of the 20th century.
Begin here for your study of Al Qaeda, which then adds Qutb's Lenin-Marxism, and the resentment of the Afghanistan invasion by the Russians, the efforts of the ISI of Pakistan to enforce strict Islam on the resistence, and the removal of Saddam's foot from the neck of those unhappy in Iraq. Include those who were suddenly out of work when Saddam was overthrown and had grown used to being in charge.
Now include:
"Yemen has become a jihadist hub where Saudi jihadists have regrouped along with their counterparts from Iraq, Somalia, etc. Yemens north-south divide is re-emerging, meaning that there are two competing nationalisms in the country."
More jihadis in Afghanistan and Pakistan, both different that Iraq, or Saudi Arabia:
"Afghanistan and Pakistan both have highly fragmented religious landscapes consisting of rival Islamist groups, competing Sunni sects and networks of madrassas, the Deobandis (the sect of the Taliban and other Islamist militant groups) are a growing movement, posing a challenge to the Shia and the majority Barelvis (a South Asian form of Sufi Islam)."
Stratfor.com
Even Saudi Arabia has suffered attacks by what you would call Al Qaeda, or pre-Al Qaeda jihadis, including the dramatic attack on the Kaaba in 1979. See "The Siege of Mecca," by Trofimov.
In summary, the argument that the US either created Al Qaeda or served as a recruiting tool is false. The philosophy must be traced back to the Ikhwan prior to 1900, and a time-line can be created to show the incorporations and permutations that resulted in the radical groups we see today.
The talking point "the attack (invasion) of Iraq is the reason for the fighters in Iraq" or its corollary, "we are less safe today" is therefore, bogus.
Do a little more work before your next post.
"I guess that puts a stake through the heart of your argument."
