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Originally Posted by Happy Monkey
Who's worse off? A US presence in the Middle East is exactly what the terrorist leaders need to ramp up recruiting, and military action isn't effective against terrorism.
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The shah and his cronies are. Our presence does make for juicier propogandizing and recruitment tactics, no question. But for the larger goal of establishing one big Islamic superpower with the head in Tehran, it's a backbreaker. Now, instead of using terrorism in conjunction with backroom deal-making to achieve their goals, the Shiites will have to distance themselves from the terror cells they created to get any policymaking to go their way.
And while military action can't answer every terrorist act tete-a-tete, it is effective. Once the tanks come in, it's a war of attrition -- regardless of what kind of war the terrorists would
like to wage, we can kill them faster than they can kill us, and eventually they won't have the numbers to be effective. That's not counting the effect that running water, electricity, new schools, hospitals and women voting have on the message of the terrorists.
Every day the NY Times/al Jazeera runs an article talking about the US' failure in Iraq. Every day the death toll rises as more employment lines are bombed by terrorists. Yet every day, the lines fill up again, with more and more Iraqis banding together to take control of their country's future. If one is killed, two more dry their tears and come to stand in his/her place. As more Americans see what's actually occurring in country (thanks to the blogosphere and other non-big-media sources), fewer of them give credence to the obvious political partisanship of the "traditional" media.
All of this can be filed away under "Good Thing".