Home of the Brave?

Reader Larry Davis made this comment to Blue Girl's Of Strafing Runs and Pyrrhic Victories.

"I don't EVEN want to know how much DU we've dumped in Iraq, which we're told is the "front lines in the War on Terror". We must "fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here".

We have selected Iraq as the killing field in our fight with a third party, so that its populace will suffer and die, not ours, and its cities will be destroyed, not ours.

Home of the Brave? "

That is the justification for American involvement in Iraq, isn't it.

"We are committed to defending the nation. Yet wars are not won on the defensive. The best way to keep America safe from terrorism is to go after terrorists where they plan and hide." -- President George W. Bush November 16, 2002. Of course, for President Bush that included going to Iraq.

On April 25, 2007, Richard Clarke addressed the President's approach in a New York Daily News Op-Ed. Calling the President's approach the "puppy dog terror theory," Clarke asked "(d)oes the President think terrorists are puppy dogs? He keeps saying that terrorists will "follow us home" like lost dogs. This will only happen, however, he says, if we "lose" in Iraq." He answered his own question by saying

Of course, nothing about our being "over there" in any way prevents terrorists from coming here. Quite the opposite, the evidence is overwhelming that our presence provides motivation for people throughout the Arab world to become anti-American terrorists.

Just yesterday Brian Ross of ABC News reported that

Teams assigned to carry out attacks in the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Germany were introduced at an al Qaeda/Taliban training camp graduation ceremony held June 9.

A Pakistani journalist was invited to attend and take pictures as some 300 recruits, including boys as young as 12, were supposedly sent off on their suicide missions.

There is video at the ABC site. Apparently, al Qaeda didn't get the "puppy dog" memo.

The next time you hear the President, some Republican candidate or a representative of the administration say something like "(w)e either deal with terrorism and this extremism abroad, or we deal with it when it comes to us" think about what Richard Clarke said back in April

Some 100,000 Iraqis, probably more, have been killed since our invasion. They have parents, children, cousins and fellow tribal clan members who have pledged revenge no matter how long it takes. For many, that revenge is focused on America.

At the same time, investing time, energy and resources in Iraq takes our eye off two far more urgent tasks at hand: one, guarding the homeland against terrorism much better than the pork-dispensing Department of Homeland Security currently does the job; and two, systematically dismantling Al Qaeda all over the world, from Canada to Asia to Africa. On both these fronts, the Bush administration's focus is sorely lacking....

In the real world, by choosing unnecessarily to go into Iraq, Bush not only diverted efforts from delivering a death blow to Al Qaeda, he gave that movement both a second chance and the best recruiting tool possible.

Thanks for the reminder Larry.