MESSING UP THE JIHAD EVEN BIN LADEN SEES TERRORISM BACKLASH.

Byline: CHRIS WEINKOPF

THE anonymous U.S. government officials who told the media last week about the message they intercepted from Osama bin Laden to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi never divulged the communication's actual wording. But we can guess:

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful - Knock it off! You're totally messing up the jihad!

Or something like that.

What we know is that bin Laden, terrorist mastermind, told Zarqawi, terrorist middle manager, to change his tactics. Instead of simply continuing his attacks against hospitals, mosques and civilians in Iraq, OBL urged AMZ to take his game to America. Strike the infidels where they live.

For the day or so that this story held currency, the media largely treated it as a matter for the Department of Homeland Security: Will Washington upgrade the color-coded terror alerts? Ought we worry more about terrorism now that the holy warrior who's spent the last two years terrorizing Iraq has been ordered to terrorize America?

But that narrow focus seems to miss the larger picture. Between orchestrating his daily slaughters and trying to elude U.S. and Iraqi forces - which have recently nabbed some of his key associates and are said to be closing in - Zarqawi is one busy brute. He hardly seems positioned to take on the added burden of the ambitious project that bin Laden has recommended for him.

Bin Laden, who's quite well-informed for a guy living in a cave, knows this, which is why his memo is about more than the usual claptrap of washing America's streets with blood. Implicit in his missive is a recognition that the ``insurgency'' isn't living up to expectations: Take your act to America, because whatever you're doing in Iraq, it ain't working.

Oh, sure, Zarqawi's zealots are doing a bang-up job in the death-and-mayhem department. Massacring innocents is easy work, especially when you've got an international troupe of would-be martyrs and otherwise unemployed Baathists at your disposal. But it's a lousy way to win the hearts and minds of the Arab Street.

The results speak for themselves.

First, despite threats that casting ballots would get them and their family members killed, 8 million Iraqis turned out to the polls in January - an overwhelming statement that they weren't intimidated by, let alone sympathetic to, the terrorists' agenda. Meanwhile, the new Iraqi government takes shape in the face of relentless attacks. And even though the nascent Iraqi police and security services are the terrorists' prime targets, both continue to attract new recruits among Iraqis eager to fight back.

In a show of further defiance, when terrorists perpetuated their single greatest mass murder last week - killing 125 Iraqis at a medical clinic - some 2,000 Iraqis responded by risking their lives and staging a protest at the very site on the very next day. Their chant: ``No to terrorism!''

Bin Laden gets the message loud and clear, even if Zarqawi, who seems unlikely to take his boss' advice, is oblivious. Zarqawi's efforts to brutalize the Iraqi people into submission are backfiring. And it's little surprise. Whereas the new government offers Iraqis freedom, opportunity, tolerance and a voice in their future, the terrorists offer suicide bombings, beheadings, civil war and inglorious martyrdom - not exactly a winning appeal.

Worse yet, as far as bin Laden is concerned, Zarqawi's failure - or, perhaps more aptly, freedom's triumph - in Iraq is having dramatic repercussions throughout the region. The Lebanese people have driven their Syrian puppet government out of office. Syria, in turn, promises to leave the country within a matter of months. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, feeling the heat, has made some noise about actually letting someone run against him in his next election. Even Saudi Arabia has sanctioned some local elections, while granting its Shiite minority a small taste of religious and political freedom.

Remember when critics warned that the liberation of Iraq would spawn a generation of Osama bin Ladens? Instead, it has spawned a generation of Vaclav Havels.

Yes, there's still a long way to go, the path will be perilous, and a happy ending is by no means assured. But bin Laden certainly can't be satisfied with the way 2005 has started out for him. A sworn enemy of democracy, he now sees democratically elected governments taking root in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories, while threatening to spring up elsewhere throughout the region.

So OBL is calling AMZ to a different approach. Rather than continue the failed effort of scaring Iraqis away from democracy, he wants the Jordanian militant to concentrate on scaring America and its democratic influence out of the Middle East. If the insurgency strikes here, bin Laden figures, we'll cut and run there, thus giving Iraq back to the thugs and putting an end to all this dangerous talk about democracy.

Of course, this is just a variation of the strategy the al-Qaida leader has embraced all along, and there's little reason to believe it will work any better in this context.

While 9-11 might have provided bin Laden with instant gratification, it triggered the war that set into motion the revolution now threatening to destroy all he holds dear. The fundamentalist who has fought to keep Muslim nations locked in the 8th Century now watches as they careen headlong into the 21st.

We can only imagine Zarqawi's response to bin Laden's directive:

May peace and Allah's blessings and mercy be upon you - but you're the one who got us in this mess!

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Photo:

(color) An estimated 2,000 Iraqis demonstrate in condemnation of the single deadliest suicide bombing since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Khalid Mohammed/Associated Press