Jay Stevens gets it Wrong and Wronger

At Left in the West, Jay Stevens examines the roots of terrorism. Now, I have to give him credit that he acknowledges that poverty is not the root of terrorism, as he had previously thought. But then, in a stunning display of muddle headed thinking, he goes on to proclaim that the root of terrorism is our occupation of Iraq. Excuse me? If we didn't invade Iraq until 2003, how were the terrorists so prescient that they attacked us on 9-11, the USS Cole, the African Embassy bombings, and Khobar towers before we invaded? Could it be that Jay is trying to shoehorn the root cause of terrorism into his preconceived notions?
Jay cites to Alan Kruger who has this special observation:

One set of factors that I examined did consis­tently raise the likelihood that people from a given country will participate in terrorism-namely, the suppression of civil liberties and political rights, including freedom of the press, the freedom to assemble, and democratic rights. Using data from the Freedom House Index, for example, I found that countries with low levels of civil liberties are more likely to be the countries of origin of the perpetra­tors of terrorist attacks. In addition, terrorists tend to attack nearby targets. Even international terror­ism tends to be motivated by local concerns.

So, this explains the rapid rise in homegrown Islamic terrorists in that repressive, civil rights violating, lack of freedom country of Great Britain? Don't suppose that there might be another answer do you?
Well, in the spirit of Jay, here is as good a half baked answer as any of his: Terrorism, especially of the Islamic version, is the direct result of high self esteem accompanied by low rates of real achievement. If your entire region published less books than Greece, and you haven't had any scientific development since the end of the 12th Century, you know that it just has to be the result of Satanic forces, since Allah loves Moslems. It must be Allah's will that they should be ruling the world, not apostates or infidels. And anything that prevents their ruling the world is in opposition to Allah, and therefore legitimate to exterminate.
I have been toying with the thought for awhile, that about 1200 years after a religion is founded, it goes crazy. Think of the Spanish Inquisition, and look at Islam today after the same amount of time. As a Christian, there is nothing to be proud of what was done in our religions name.
I can only hope that Moslems will feel the same way about their excesses, and hope that they don't take as long as we did.