The premise here is simple: for years now, the administration and its defenders have been pushing the utterly laughable premise that by staying in Iraq, we are somehow fully occupying the attention of “the terrorists” and keeping them from attempting operations around the world. Fight them there and we don’t have to fight them here (the unstated implication being that somehow all the devastation of the fighting is far better imposed on the people of Iraq than the more valuable lives of folks in the West). While there is some merit to the idea that Iraq was drawing in insurgents, he idea was mostly silly because 1) the supply of terrorists is not finite: having a cause to run off to can radicalize more new faces, and 2) nothing about Iraq being a great place to fight and kill Americans prevents anyone not in or near Iraq from committing acts of terrorism.
Well that argument seems to be getting even more ridiculous, plus extremely dangerous:
Long story short, Iraq attracted new faces to terrorism and jihad (rather than simply drawing in old faces) where they have been able to organize, train, and are now beginning to export their services. In short, the idea that we are fighting to keep Iraq from being a training ground for terrorists is horribly backwards: Iraq HAS been a training ground for terrorists, especially thanks to us giving them a locus point and cause to organize and battle-test their forces around, and its now starting to spread out again.
Even more perverse, in many cases, the direct trainers of some of these new breeds of terrorists are… well… us. As in Iraqi security forces who we trained to fight who then go on to fight us.
I don’t think that the idea is a rodeo-style roundup of all the ter’rists. The idea conservatives are pushing is that we can and should stabilize Iraq, but on our own terms. Freedom-loving democracy, stable economy, good trade partners, etc. etc.
You can argue whether stabilizing Iraq, and having it become a permanent, powerful ally in the Middle East is impossible, or morally wrong, and have a legitimate basis for argument. It’s a bit of a straw-man fallacy to say that the US is just trying to shoot the terrorists until there aren’t any more left, though. Almost everyone knows that’s just silly.
I’m of the opinion that a stable and powerful Iraq ally would be a giant leap of progress toward ending radical Jihadism. The end might be brilliant, but I really don’t see any practical means to achieving it. We aren’t stabilizing Iraq, it will almost certainly not be a permanent ally, and all we’re accomplishing in the war is to create more recruitment propaganda for terrorist organizations.
I never bought that we could give democracy to the iraqis. They aren’t ready, and islam is not exactly going to support it if it’s in power at all.
A lot of the insurgents are Kuwaitis. This needs to be studies. It’s not nationalism that is fueling this, it’s the same thing that caused both WTC attacks. It’s jihad. It’s islamic ideals.
The worst thing we can do is cut and run. It’ll make running from Vietnam look like a great thing. It’s really scary that people don’t want to finish this war off with a victory.
This logic is astonishingly bizarre. It’s like arguing that “god forbid we feed and breed rats and increase our vermin problem, its not like there haven’t been some buildings with rats in them before.”
The goal should be less terrorists, less terrorism. How are we accomplishing that goal? Is it possible, just possible, that we re accomplishing the exact opposite?
Victory means a defeat of jihadist islam. That is long term. Trust me, you can look up usenet discussions on usenet from the 80’s and they figured the USSR was forever and we could never stop communism from spreading. That was basically the majority view, and the liberals said we need to back down or just surrender in general to them to avoid war.
Victory now means the same thing. Stop the islamic world from being a threat to civilization.
It’s more bizarre to say they didn’t hate us at maximum already. Cause they did. When you’re already hated as much as possible, you can’t make it ‘worse’.
Yeah, I read that article over the weekend, and I just shook my head…
Firstly, the idea of “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here” is, to my mind, morally repugnant. We lure them into Iraq to fight, and to kill Iraqis, so that they don’t kill Americans? I don’t see how anyone could defend that.
And secondly, we were fighting them “over there”, in Afghanistan-- which is where they were. We didn’t need to lure them anywhere. In fact, most of the al Qaeda/Taliban fighters whom we didn’t kill or capture in Afghanistan appear to have fled into Pakistan (or the areas of Afghanistan near the Pakistani border).
I don’t buy into the theory that the “terrorists” in Iraq will follow us home if we leave. I think they’ll be too busy “over there” to bother with us. But if we don’t start getting out of there, they might find it easier to target Americans outside Iraq, than inside Iraq. And that might include Americans in the US, not just Americans in the M.E. or Europe.
And the way you would do that is to stop messing in their affairs and let them run their own nations. But the US will never get its mitts out of others’ business. So, again, there is no ‘victory’.
It’s easy to sit in your chair and pop off these little bits of brilliance, except that they do not take reality into account. Communism was ‘destroyed’ by the government of the time in the nation, in case you don’t actually understand what happened there. America didn’t trundle in there with tanks and guns and force it on them. Gorby and his group had, for a long time, planned to change the way the administration was run and they chose their moment.
In short, totally, completely, utterly not the same situation.
So we do what Al Qaeda wants; invade Iraq, knock off it’s secular leader, let the Islamic fanatics destroy Iraqi secularism, and in the process feed the jihadists money and recruits ? This is going to defeat them ?
And they are not a threat to civilization. They are too weak.
Hmm. Who to believe. Well, let’s see; you’ve suggested such talk was common. Mosier suggests it wasn’t. I think really the best way to prove you’re right would be to cite your sources, please.