One of Bush’s and the neocon’s favorites slogans is that “we’re fighting them over there so, we don’t have to fight them over here.” I have always found that to be a ludicrous notion. I find it silly because, first of all, we have not done nearly enough to secure the homeland here (our ports and borders are still not secure and too many of our National Guardsmen are in Iraq) and, secondly, we are assuming that they aren’t already here.

However, there was another piece of wisdom offered, but ignored. It was that Iraq was becoming a training laboratory for terrorists. Basically, it is allowing militants to learn the skills needed to attack Americans and their allies. Now, this reality has become more apparent. Iraqi insurgents are traveling outside of Iraq and pose a very real danger to neighboring countries and beyond. What this means is that, instead of stopping terrorism, our presence in Iraq has only made more terrorists, this time with experience in battling our military.

Here’s a sobering excerpt from the New York Times article:

Militant leaders warn that the situation in Lebanon is indicative of the spread of fighters. “You have 50 fighters from Iraq in Lebanon now, but with good caution I can say there are a hundred times that many, 5,000 or higher, who are just waiting for the right moment to act,” Dr. Mohammad al-Massari, a Saudi dissident in Britain who runs the jihadist Internet forum, Tajdeed.net, said in an interview on Friday. “The flow of fighters is already going back and forth, and the fight will be everywhere until the United States is willing to cease and desist.”

There are signs of that traffic in and out of Iraq in other places.

In Saudi Arabia last month, government officials said they had arrested 172 men who had plans to attack oil installations, public officials and military posts, and some of the men appeared to have trained in Iraq.

Officials in Europe have said in interviews that they are trying to monitor small numbers of Muslim men who have returned home after traveling for short periods to Iraq, where they were likely to have fought alongside insurgents.

One of them, an Iraqi-born Dutch citizen, Wesam al-Delaema, was accused by United States prosecutors of making repeated trips to Iraq from his home in the Netherlands to prepare instructional videos on making roadside bombs, charges he denies. He was extradited to the United States in January and charged with conspiring to kill American citizens, possessing a destructive device and teaching the making or use of explosives.

In an April 17 report written for the United States government, Dennis Pluchinsky, a former senior intelligence analyst at the State Department, said battle-hardened militants from Iraq posed a greater threat to the West than extremists who trained in Afghanistan because Iraq had become a laboratory for urban guerrilla tactics.

So, my conclusion is that it’s not cowardice to leave Iraq. It’s about not creating a bigger mess. Perhaps we do need a war on terrorism but, like I’ve stated previously, the civilian leadership in charge of this war are not the people we need coming up with the policy. They have proven themselves to be not up to the task. Therefore, we need some real policy change and we, as Americans, have to lead the charge for that change.

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