The Firing Squad Stands in a Circle

Kos:

Bush's latest rationale for maintaining the course in Iraq adventure has been the "flypaper strategy" -- it's better to fight the terrorists over there than at home. Nevermind that the Iraqis never asked to have their country turned into a dangerous den of terrorism, insurgency, violence and death. For war supporters looking for an excuse, any excuse, to justify the continued disastrous American presence in Iraq, the flypaper rationale was as good as any.

Except that it's not working. The war isn't making the West any safer. In fact, it's creating a whole new class of terrorists. Today it was London. Next time it could easily be the United States. And waging the war in Iraq, rather than make us safer, is further motivating Islamic terrorists to strike at the West.

...

But Bush (and Blair) took their eyes off the prize -- neglected to finish the job in Afghanistan, let Al Qaida off the hook to rebuild and reorganize, and helped swell its ranks with an unecessary and inept campaign in Iraq.

There are consequences to the mess in Iraq. And today, we're seeing one of them. Unfortunately, it won't be the last.

Terrorists have always been striking at the West—Twin Towers in 1993, USS Cole, African embassies, the twarted millennium attacks, 9/11. There isn't a whole new class of terrorist; they've been committing acts such as these since before the Second Iraq War. Even if we focused our forces in Afghanistan like we should have, events like the Bali bombing and today's London bombings could still have occurred. Terrorists are dangerous, zealous idealogues who don't need an invasion in Iraq to fashion a reason to plant bombs in a subway. Let's not fall into the same rhetoric as our conservative counterparts to aggrandize the enemy and become just as jingoistic, and let's not manufacture reasons to oppose the war in Iraq based on conjecture. There are plenty of reasons to oppose it that are the honest-to-God truth.