If not in Iraq, then where?

For those opposed to the war in Iraq, the question is why Iraq? The questions that should be asked are: If not Iraq, then where should the U.S. defend itself from radical Islamist sponsored terrorism? Should the U.S. permit the terrorists to hold the initiative or should we force confrontation on our own terms?
 
While the reasons for Islam’s attacks on the United States will be debated for decades, the reality of those attacks cannot be debated. In ever-more violent manner, the terrorists have been attacking the U.S. since the early 1980s.

Again and again we responded to those attacks as we would to criminal acts. We sent in the FBI, DIA, CIA, ATF, et al. Time and again we pledged to hunt these criminals to the ends of the earth. On occasion we attacked training camps and other targets of opportunity. We even managed to get a few of them into court.
 
The failure of this approach was dramatically demonstrated with the deaths of over 3,000 innocent Americans whose only crime was to go about their daily business.
 
Our enemy represents an asymmetric threat, a threat that has no identifiable governmental structure or seat of government, no state, no economic infrastructure and no organized and concentrated military or command and control structure.
 
Operating from host countries and organized in distributed cells, the terrorists are able to dictate the time, place and manner of the next attack. Just as we seem unable to penetrate the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), we face extreme difficulty penetrating this terrorist network.
 
Our only options are to die the death of a thousand cuts or force the enemy to face us head on.
 
We struck in Afghanistan because we had actionable proof of Taliban sponsored al-Qaida leadership presence. Afghanistan is not a battlefield that will serve to force a confrontation with the enemy. What is needed is a battlefield the enemy cannot ignore. What is needed is a battlefield so compelling, so proximate and so threatening to the heart of the terrorist movement that confrontation is assured.

Iraq is that battlefield.
 
Saddam Hussein had stated and demonstrated his desire to invade his neighbors. He did all in his power to successfully convince the West that he had the means, capability and will to develop and deliver weapons of mass destruction. He defied all U.N. resolutions. He dared us to attack. We accommodated.
 
It matters not whether his boasts were empty. What matters is the West and we believed they were not bluffing. The result, whether intended or not, is we secured a battlefield that demanded a response from our terrorist enemies.
 
Whether there were terrorists in Iraq or not, they are there now and they are not dictating the time, place and manner of the next attack on the U.S. The terrorists are in disarray and they are localized. The United States has the initiative, messy as it may be.
 
We may still be at risk of attack on home soil. But that risk has been significantly diminished by our actions in Iraq. While the price has been dear for our military, the hard cold truth is we spend our national treasure on a competent and effective military force to make the sacrifice we do not wish our civilian populous to face.


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Ross Hieb, a retired Marine aviator, is a Yuma City Council member. He wrote a series of first-hand reports from Iraq for The Sun in 2006.