The occupation of Iraq has cost well over $400 billion so far, and estimates of its total cost exceed $1 trillion. More Americans have died in Iraq than on 9/11, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died.
Unfortunately, this expensive occupation reduces the safety of United States citizens and increases the threat of terrorism, namely by angering much of the world and increasing anti-US sentiments which spawns and emboldens anti-US terrorists.
Michael Scheuer, who served in the CIA for 22 years as chief of the bin Laden unit at the Counterterrorist Center, says that the war in Iraq has hurt the fight against terrorism:
4. Has the war in Iraq helped or hurt in the fight against terrorism?
It broke the back of our counterterrorism program. Iraq was the perfect execution of a war that demanded jihad to oppose it. You had an infidel power invading and occupying a Muslim country and it was perceived to be unprovoked. Many senior Western officials said that bin Laden was not a scholar and couldn’t declare a jihad but other Muslim clerics did. So that religious question was erased.
Secondly, Iraq is in the Arab heartland and, far more than Afghanistan, is a magnet for mujahideen. You can see this in the large number of people crossing the border to fight us. It wasn’t a lot at the start, but there’s been a steady growth as the war continues. The war has validated everything bin Laden said: that the United States will destroy any strong government in the Arab world, that it will seek to destroy Israel’s enemies, that it will occupy Muslim holy places, that it will seize Arab oil, and that it will replace God’s law with man’s law. We see Iraq as a honey pot that attracts jihadists whom we can kill there instead of fighting them here. We are ignoring that Iraq is not just a place to kill Americans; Al Qaeda has always said that it requires safe havens. It has said it couldn’t get involved with large numbers in the Balkans war because it had no safe haven in the region. Now they have a safe haven in Iraq, which is so big and is going to be so unsettled for so long. For the first time, it gives Al Qaeda contiguous access to the Arabian Peninsula, to Turkey, and to the Levant. We may have written the death warrant for Jordan. If we pull out of Iraq, we have a problem in that we may have to leave a large contingent of troops in Jordan. All of this is a tremendous advantage for Al Qaeda. We’ve moved the center of jihad a thousand miles west from Afghanistan to the Middle East.
I agree with Michael Scheuer.
Why did the U.S. people let their government go to Iraq and cause so many problems? Why do they still let the occupation of Iraq continue? Unfortunately, 41% of Americans still believe the myth that Saddam Hussein’s regime was directly involved in financing, planning or carrying out the terrorist attacks on 9/11. 90% of US troops believe that myth!
I imagine that most of the pro-war people in the United States believe that myth. Unfortunately, their ignorance has endangered the rest of the United States by getting the country involved in a dangerous and unpopular invasion that has increased the threat of terrorism, stretched U.S. defenses, and wasted hundreds of billions of dollars that could have been used to actually protect the people of the United States.
If Iraq committed 9/11, then the so-called war might make sense. However, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
