Quote:
Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
I see it differently. It seems to me that people who were going to be flying over here aren't now rushing into Iraq to fight. There are plenty of new recruits in Iraq who no longer have a home or a family (and I'm not saying this to be a bleeding heart, but to understand why we're having such a problem) who are more than willing to do whatever to take out some Americans there.
So, the missile Clinton shot off after the first attempt on the WTC was equally as effective as Bush's war? I don't buy it. Just because we haven't been hit again doesn't mean Bush gets credit for it. It seems clear that they hit us and have turned to convincing other countries to back away from us. I'm not going to give Bush credit for influencing their strategy -- especially when, as you and Hank said, it is so easy to hit us here in the states. Hell, we've lost over a thousand soldiers in Iraq. For all any of us know, Osama puts this in his win column. They haven't gotten him and he's directly and indirectly responsible for the death of 4,000 people and counting. And everyday, another Osama clone pops up beheading people or blowing somebody up.
TM
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Well, it still remains to be seen whether the Iraqis will decide to take revenge on us or just get their infrastructure together and get on with their lives. I will say this - Perle, Wolfowitz and Chalabi should be indicted for something. Those three idiots sold the "The Iraqis will greet us with roses" story, and thats turned out to be utterly unsupported horseshit.
As to your second point, no one can ever prove how effective or ineffective a response to terror has been. On what criteria do we determine success or failure? No one knows why nothing heppened in the last three years. My theory was that the Iraqi distraction was partly the reason, but your theory says otherwise. I can see you point, and historians will debate this for a long time.
I think Bush will have the strangest legacy in Presidential history -he'll be thought by half the people a visionary, the other half a war criminal. Our kids' kids will know his name because this "war" we're in, its going to be around for good. Think about it.... the one difference between this war and all others was that the others had finite lives. One group (Nazis, Communism) would lose, one (Democratic states) would win. But now, there's no win and no lose. There's just struggle. Its really not a war at all. Its just a struggle like the Israeli intifada on a global scale (yes, I apologize for citing the obvious). You don't end that kind of conflict because it never has an all-deciding battle. Fucking scary when you think about it this way, since the only all-deciding battle possible, which AQ clearly wants, is nuclear. In that regard, Cheney ain't wrong in his perception, just his reaction.
