May 30, 2008

I Disagree

Yesterday Rusty made this statement in one of his posts:

Given 20/20 hindsight, I've slowly come around the to argument that invading Iraq was a mistake. We shouldn't have invaded Iraq. That decision did not enhance our national security.

I couldn't disagree more. We've discussed this issue heatedly in our private forum, and my first inclination was to simply let the post pass unremarked (other than in comments), but I didn't want any Jawa reader to think that I was endorsing this viewpoint by my silence.

Iraq opened a vital second front that prevented jihadis from across the region from massing against Coalition troops in Afghanistan. It required them to divide their resources. Just ask the Soviets what happens when mujaheddin region-wide mass on a small front; even with near total control of their own media, massive injections of troops and materiel, and an utterly ruthless approach to counter-insurgent warfare, the Soviets withdrew in defeat.

In addition, we took out a ruthless tyrant who was slaughtering his own people using WMD (unless you're some kind of conspiracy theorist who believes those Kurds were actually gassed by the CIA), was openly defying UN resolutions, was participating in fraud with the collusion of German and French interests in the oil-for-food scandal, was openly supporting terrorists via monetary support to the families of suicide bombers...well, if you're going to say the invasion was a mistake then you're required to make the case for keeping Saddam in power. I'm sure the French and the Germans could make that case (or would have before their perfidy was exposed).

The invasion of Iraq has helped us in the Long War by dividing our enemies and keeping them occupied far away from our homeland. Compare the number of terrorist attacks since we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq with the number in the nineties, when we treated terrorist attacks as police matters. Certainly, many attempts have been thwarted by increased vigilance, but it's foolish to believe that many were not stillborn because the jihadis were occupied closer to home.

Update: From the comments, See-Dubya points us to this post he made in April at Michelle Malkin's site, highlighting a respected analyst who believes our troops in Iraq have greatlly enhanced America's security and credibility.