Anyone who hasn't been living under a rock on Mars during the last three years has heard one particular phrase rehashed
ad nauseam: that it is better to be "fighting the terrorists over there."
Crossposted from my blog and My Left Wing.
This talking point was launched by the self-styled 'moderate rightwing' blogger
Andy Sullivan in the
Sunday Times, September 2003:
Some time before the Iraq war, I found myself musing out loud to someone close to the inner circles of the Bush administration.
[snip]
And what he said surprised me. If the terrorists leave us alone in Iraq, fine, he said. But if they come and get us, even better. Far more advantageous to fight terror using trained soldiers in Iraq than trying to defend civilians in New York or London. "Think of it as a flytrap," he ventured. Iraq would not simply be a test-case for Muslim democracy; it would be the first stage in a real and aggressive war against the terrorists and their sponsors in Ryadh and Damascus and Tehran. Operation Flytrap had been born.
[snip]
If it wasn't a central part of the strategy from the beginning, it was surely a Plan B. And from statements from key Bush officials in the past couple of months, it's clear that it's now very close to Plan A.
Emphasis added. Over to the Sunday Times today:
Senior security sources say leaders of the Iraqi insurgency have set up a "foreign legion" composed entirely of westerners to fight alongside the insurgents in the war against British and American forces.
[snip]
The flow of young Muslim men from western Europe to Iraq has increased dramatically in the past two years. The "pipeline" of suspected terrorists is being fuelled by growing resentment about American and British policy and scandals such as the mistreatment of inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison.
[snip]
Security sources say dozens of cases have been unearthed in recent months where suspected would-be suicide bombers have been stopped at British airports while they were en route to join the insurgency.
Let's grant, for the sake of argument, the warmongers' almost fantastic assumption that there is a fixed quantity of jihadis, so that the invasion and the civil war have not swelled their ranks. Let's further set aside the questionable ethics of designating Iraq as a killing zone for terrorists and its dubious compatibility with the goal of jump-starting democracy there.
Then 'Operation Flytrap' would seem to be buzzing along impressively! Why, a whole 'foreign legion' of ticking bombs diverted from the West to the sweet scent of martyrdom in Iraq! What more could one ask for?
In that case, however, I do have a query to the war fans: Why are British authorities stopping these wannabe martyrs at the airports?
Why don't they fund a recruitment office in London instead?
Don't come here and tell us that even Plan B has crashed like a dizzy little bug! Or should we say, like a wingnut?