August 13, 2007

A lot of people are convinced that if we leave Iraq, then all of our problems will go away and we will never be at risk again. Some people claim that if we leave Iraq and give away all of Israel's land to its enemies, then terrorists will leave everyone alone. They believe that the war will be ended, and we can continue to live in our Western freedoms and comfort, even though we will have left many millions of people to live under forms of government that we, personally would not want to live under. But we'll be okay.

This is not only reprehensible, but entirely unlikely. The worldview of the terrorists requires that they bring the whole world under subjugation to their views. Since we are not under such subjugation, they must attack and harm us until we are. Terrorists have not stopped molesting Afghanistan after we turned most of our attention to Iraq. There is little reason to believe that they won't try to continue their attacks should we leave Iraq.

Furthermore, Israel ceding land has yet to promote more peace: in fact, generally the opposite occurs. As soon as the land is ceded, terrorists use it to launch further attacks into Israel, like an invading army seizing ground and using it to launch further strikes.

The strategies of giving up land and leaving fights we don't enjoy clearly don't work. Maybe it's time we gave the war on terror a chance.