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Originally Posted by Freesail99
I have to be honest and I would love someone to explain to me, I just never understood this.
How does fighting them ( the terrorist ) over there keep them from coming here ? I mean, would the terrorist rather fight an army with tanks, and jets and bombs and warships or do something like they did on 9/11 ? Are they that dumb or are we for believing that to be so ?
I just could never wrap my mind around that argument.
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Free,
I'll admit that you have a good point and I'd normally be befuddled as to how to answer it. Fortunately I have the recent illustration of Saddam Hussein to draw upon. Saddam was the guy who got his tookus kicked in Kuwait and southern Iraq in the early nineties. Baghdad would be called Schwartzkopfville today if GHW Bush hadn't invoked the mercy rule. The vaunted fifth largest standing army in the world got waxed by a modest deployment of coalition forces. Given that history, and the repeated calls for compliance with UN mandates, from GW Bush one would have thought that Mr. Hussein might have recalled the last time he encountered the American fighting man. But no, he chose the big bluff. Apparently it's better to be dead than to be dishonored.
Osama and al-Qaeda made a similar mistake. Their calls to the Arab world to unite and drive the infidel from Iraq have been a mixed bag. While they've had a decent turn-out for the event, they and their leadership keep running into US Marines, if the odd Predator drone doesn't find them first. Regardless of what we think al-Qaeda bet the farm on Iraq. They couched it in terms of driving the infidel from the holy land. I really don't think they counted on alienating the Iraqis in the bargain. Nevertheless, their efforts have been towards winning Iraq and, with the forces in Afghanistan, their lines of communication have not been what they were pre-9/11. I think that goes a long way towards explaining why there have been no attacks on western soil.
A foolish tactical decision to fight within Iraq as well as the American military's ability to make them pay for that mistake have resulted in an al-Qaeda somewhat on their heels. It's only a guess if matters will stay this way but then too, one should remember that security is not the joke it was pre-9/11 either. As farcical as it may seem, security is tighter than pre-9/11 and nobody is getting a connecting flight through Berlin from Kabul to flight school in Florida any more. I hear recruiting is down as well now that you're pretty well assured of meeting Allah with the first US citizen you meet.
Remember the little soliloquy between Saddam and Colin Powell? Saddam claimed that 95% of the American populace couldn't find Iraq on a map. Powell responded that, unfortunately for Saddam, the other 5% of Americans were US Marines.