Ironically you seem to paint a world more black and white than you realize ... but let me try to respond to some of what you wrote, including with some questions, both rhetorical and actual questions to make sure I understand what it is that you are saying ... I'm on my way out, so this will be a bit rished ...
Ironically (or hypocritically), while accusing others of a black and white outlook, I do hold my own sense of a black and white. I involve the grey in my assesments and turn it into black and white conclusions. Does that even make sense? I just know that "WMD" and "imminent threat" has nothing to do with it.
let me begin with some questions ... How did 9/11 demonstrate that it was a regional threat?
Most of the 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. However, Al-Queda was and is bigger than those 18 few. They were victims of the Wahhabist rhetoric that comes from the House of Saud that reaches the region. Al-Queda is made up of citizens from all those nations and they are all victims of social injustice and economic failure that encourages religious extremism as an answer for all problems. The answer is not the images of 9/11. It is behind it. 9/11 was a symptom and the act of it was forecasted by plenty Middle Eastern experts like Ralph Peters and Bernard Lewis.
The ease in which people from all over the region traveled to fight Americans and the Shia in Iraq to disrupt any sense of social democratic progress should demonstrate how regional and civilizational this issue is. Shouldn't the fact that Al-Queda had traveled from Sudan, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Pakistan, to Mali prove that these type organizations find comfort throughout the region for a reason? It's because they are accepted from place to place wherever they find a portion of the population that approves of their measures. This is a civilizational problem for which Iraq was only locally exempt because "our" one time brutal dictator (while funding terrroist organizations) brutalized the population and created the very thing that creates the Al-Quedas throughout the region. The answer to Al-Queda is not to create brutal dictators.
Did Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor show the threat was the region?
Pearl Harbor was a national attack comprised of Japanese citizens. It was not a result of a regional social and economic failure trapped in an endless game of blame. In other words, the attack did not involve citizens throughout the Pacific. Our enemy then was easier to identify. Today, we have to find a scapegoat like Saddam Hussein or Bin Laden to explain away the regional conflict we are actually in.
However, why did we choose Germany as an enemy that had nothing to do with attacking us? Because they were the larger economic problem that the rest of Europe was failing to curtail. The minute they began sinking our ships in the Atlantic Roosevelt started hamming up "democracy" and "freedom." The same was true for World War I with Wilson. Behind these words was economic instability caused by the Central Powers/Axis and the Allies. Like that, Al-Queda was not solely an Afghanistan issue. It was closer to the heartland of Islam, where Saddam Hussein (who we needed to get rid of anyway) sat in the middle of. Our bigger economic issues was Europe, not the Pacific. Out bigger 9/11 threats was the Sunni Middle East, not Asian Afghanistan.
What, exactly, is the threat? Has U.S. policy in the region, recent and in the more distant past, contributed to the way we are perceived in that part of the world (and elsewhere) and helps to explain the "threat?" Are we that innocent, or is what you're suggesting is that that doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that we win against them. Am I understanding you correctly? What are these themes that they share? Sounds a lot like the familiar they're all the same, they all look alike.
The threat is economic stablity. Always has been. The same as it was for the Barbary Pirates Wars, World War I, World War II in Europe, Vietnam, and the Gulf War. We have been attacked 2 times (I don't include the Mexican-American War) - Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Beyond wars against the Japanese and the Afghans, what was the rest of these wars even about? We fooled ourselves into thinking that economic stability in the Middle East was always going to be secure under dictators who defied the Soviet Union. As soon as Hussein invaded Kuwait we should have accepted that our foreign policy needed to change. The Arab Spring of a few years ago proved that our foreign policies were not keeping up with the changing of the times. We don't get to witness the creation of over 120 democracies in the world since 1900 and keep denying the Middle East (an entire region) their opportunity to grow forever. In the mean time, Islmaic extremism exponentially grew under the brutality and oppression of dictators.
I don't see how I'm clinging to the WMD idea, but if it helps you make your point to say that, go for it. We do agree that there is a lot that westerners do not undersatand, including the role that the U.S. has played in taking out democratically-elected and popular leaders and replacing them with dictators, and then arming them to the teeth, even training them on American soil, all in the name of national security. But then again, that makes it all legitimate and us innocent victims.
There it is. You just described the Cold War I was talking about - exactly what our foriegn policy was about. STABILITY. However, this stability was at the expense of the populations and was always temporary. Business endures because democracies don't die. Will our business deals with France end becaus the French President has a heart attack? Dictators die and along with them any deals they made with foreign countries. This is why we struggled to maintain their thrones throughout the Cold War. When that Berlin Wall came down, we didn't know what to do. It was like releasing the pressure of a soda can we had been shaking for decades. Eventually, that can will explode. It was seen all over the world as dictators no longer had to hold to the superpower rules of their controllers. The populations festered under their dictators. Many eventually joined others alreay in terrorist groups against their governments. Some went international to blame that good ole' foreign devil. Never did they or do they look in the mirror and examine their own culture. We help them to legitimize their own designed denials into what their people are doing.
The problem many people seem to have is that they are quick to point out our Cold War mistakes, but quick to dismiss what we are supposed to do about the repercussions. Looking the other was a foreign policy praticed between the Berlin Wall coming down (11/9) and 9/11. Citizens, who need "WMD" to define their world, still fancy this option.