Go Chuckie Go Chuckie, its your birthday, its your birthday:
For the next decade, whenever there is a terrorist attack anywhere in the world, there will be those blaming it on America: if only America had not been distracted from the war on terrorism by the war in Iraq, if only America had not stirred Muslim resentment and increased al-Qaeda recruitment by invading Iraq.
Nonsense. The "distraction" argument is the most obvious nonsense. What exactly is the U.S. not doing in the war on terrorism that it would be doing if it weren't in Iraq? We are supporting a fiercely antiterrorist democratic government in Afghanistan, hunting al-Qaeda in the impossible terrain on the Pakistani frontier, coordinating with just about every secret service in the world to disrupt terrorist communications, movement and funding. What is it about Iraq that "distracts"?
As for the recruitment claim, when was the seminal period of al-Qaeda recruitment--indeed, the period during which it created its entire worldwide infrastructure? The 1990s. No invasion of Iraq. No invasion of Afghanistan. The Clinton years saw the most open, accommodating, apologetic U.S. foreign policy since World War II. In fact, the 1990s was the decade of Muslim rescue: the U.S. intervened militarily, and decisively, to save three Muslim peoples--the Bosnians, the Kosovars and the Kuwaitis--from conquest and catastrophe. Yet it was precisely during that era of good feeling that al-Qaeda not only recruited for but also conceived, planned and set in motion the worst massacre of Americans in history. So much for the connection between American perfidy and anti-American terrorism.
Al-Qaeda always invents some excuse, some historical injury to justify its barbarism. Today Iraq, yesterday Palestine and, when all else fails, Andalusia, a bin Laden staple that refers to the Muslim loss of Spain to Ferdinand and Isabella (in 1492!). Various casus belli are served up as conditions change. Only the gullible and the appeasers buy them. Now we're told that the Iraq invasion has increased al-Qaeda recruiting.
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