There is one argument that keeps on coming up regarding the occupation of Iraq that has never made that much sense to me yet it keeps on being used. That is that if we don't stay and fight the terrorists in Iraq they will follow us back to the US. I've heard the President use it a few times this past week, Sen. Lieberman use it on the floor of the Senate yesterday and Karl Rove use it at a recent speech at the Aspen Institute. The biggest problem with this reasoning is that it presumes that Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups operate as though they are a like the military of a country with a unified chain of command and centralized / limited supply chain. So if Al Qaeda deems Iraq to be an important fight it has to direct limited resources to Iraq and that that order is carried out through their chain of command. Al Qaeda and associated Islamic extremists don't seem to operate like that all and while there are militants going to Iraq to fight it doesn't seem to be so much a part of a central command structure drawing upon central logistics but loose groups operating mostly on their own and drawing troops and supplies from ad hoc and shifting coalitions of supporters. Fighting terrorists in Iraq might tie up the ones there but doesn't automatically mean that a central terrorists command is so occupied by Iraq that they can't fight elsewhere since there is no central terrorist command. The attacks in England and other places to me are proof that fighting in Iraq doesn't have that much bearing on terrorism elsewhere as individual cells can still operate far away from Iraq not dependent on what is going on there. While many potential terrorists may want to go to Iraq to fight us they aren't ordered to do so and could choose to fight us somewhere else already. Iraq seems central in the war on terrorism only because that is where we have chosen to fight but it doesn't seem to be a constraint on the terrorists only t the extent they choose to engage us. In regard to the specific language of the argument, "if we leave they will follow us here." how exactly are they going to follow us here? It almost sounds like terrorists will hitch rides on US troop transports heading back to the US. Given relatively open global travel there doesn't seem to be a constraint dependent upon Iraq for potential terrorists travelling already. This argument seems more fitting for WWII or even Civil War style warfare where you defended territory and there was a delineated frontline and territory that forces controlled. In that case it litterally was if you retreated the enemy followed you into territory that you had controlled. The problem with this war is that there is no such thing as a frontline even in Iraq since US troops and even terrorists seem to be able to move and fight each other all over the place. On the global scale stopping terrorists seems to be less about holding off an external force but about weeding out small groups that are already in country. The idea that if we retreat they will follow seems to me to be looking at this as a setting up a Maginot line for stopping a tank charge of terrorists when the terrorists can just fly or go around the line. Even with all of those IMO obvious flaws to the argument it still seems to keep on coming up and as public opinion turns more and more against the occupation of Iraq it seems to come up more and more.
the people who say that the terrorists will follow us here are the same ones who are leaving our borders wide open and pushing for amnesty. in other words, the ones who claim to be trying to protect us are the ones destroying this country. ask the average soldier if they would rather be in iraq or on our own border. if they really believed that terrorists were trying to get into the u.s. than shouldnt their #1 priority be guarding our borders?
Actually I don't think so. I'm quickly coming around to the idea that we should pull out, while making it very clear to Iran that if they try to invade and take over Iraq we'll destroy them before they cross the desert. Then we should bomb Iran's nuclear power plant and kill all the scientists who worked at it. This is the only way to end the war and save face. If the Iraqi's want to kill themselves by all means let them. If another government comes around that hates us who cares..... after all now we know for sure they don't have WMD's.
the problem with that is that iran knows the people of america would not have the stomach to go to another war if iran did invade. I'm afraid people are losing any military fear that we use to give them
This is the problem with reckless and overuse of the military. It weakens the morale of public opinion for protracted conflict and saps resources. Rather than a show of strength on our part it exposes our weakness.
What I'm saying is we don't have to use ground forces to do it. If an army starts crossing the desert in tanks, just drop some of the biggest bombs we got in the military on them and shoot down any plane that tries to stop us. We don't have to invade Iran, we can even get the moral high ground back by because Iran would be the invader not us. We just have to make it known that Iran doesn't get to annex Iraq. People would go along with it because not many troops would go into harms way and we'd be pulling out of Iraq..just like they all want us to do. This would just be the only rational thing to do to keep stability in the region.
I can't see why this would be Iran's method, even if the USA was completely out of the picture. They would invade Iraq in the same way they used Hezbollah in Lebanon to further their goals. They will essentially fight a proxy war with shia groups who view the Ayatollahs in Iran as the supreme Shia authority. There will be no tanks and no massed movements of Iranian armies just a steady flow of small arms and training across the border. Any armies would form inside Iraq and appear totally indigenous, like the Mahdi Army. In this scenario, threats of air power (or any other massed show of force) are useless as a deterent.
How did the question get thrown off track so quickly? He asked about Al-Qaeda not Iran. The part about them "following us here" is an ignorant, bankrupt argument used by the Bush-ites to drum support for the invasion after it went bad. It's barely worthy of a reply. One simple thing to say is Iraq is the best training ground for terrorists that Al-Qaeda could ever dream of. There are more dangerous kooks out there than ever before and the world is NOT a safer place now. You can't turn urine into lemonade which is what that ignorant line of reasoning tries to do about fighting Al-Qaeda "over there" vs. "over here". On the matter of Iran, they won't invade and occupy Iraq. The will govern by proxy. What Iran will do is arm the Iraqi Shias so they will win a civil war against the Sunnis, or at least be able to defend the areas of Iraq they are dominant. For the most part, nobody else in the entire world will help Iraqi Shias besides Iran. They will be at Iran's mercy once the "coalition" pulls out and will be a servile state.
they're gonna get on one of those new 787s. I agree, its a silly argument. next time an official of the administration uses it, that official should be asked, "but haven't you stepped up airport and border security?"
