Pull out of Iraq now, and secure our border

Yesterday, President Bush made a comment about the Iraq situation. He claimed that pulling out of Iraq now will put our children in danger.

Politicians understand how to use fear to their advantage, The war proponents have long argued that, if we do not succeed in securing Iraq, Al Qaeda and other terrorists will use Iraq as a base to launch attack on America.

This argument works really well. Because it invokes the worst fear in us. It reminds us of September 11th. But have you paused and ask yourself, is this true? If we pull out of Iraq, is it true the terrorists will follow us home?

I would submit to you that this is ABSOLUTELY false.

The same line of argument was used to justify prolonging the Vietnam war. But in the end, Vietnam was lost to the Communists. But see what is happening in Vietnam now.

Let me give you another example. In 1993, UN peace keeping force in Somalia led by US, was under attack by radical militia. 19 US soldiers died in the conflict in the Capital city Mogadishu. The whole event is depicted in the movie “Black Hawk Down”. President Clinton made a decisive call to pull out of Somalia, to avoid further US military casualty. Since then, civil war broke out in Somalia. Now the country is ruled by radical The Islamic Court Union. But Somalia is never a threat to US homeland security. The terrorists in Somalia did not follow us to the home. Do they want to kill more Americans? You bet they do. But they can't do anything to us if we are not there.

If we pull out of Iraq, will terrorists attempt to take control of Iraq. You bet they will try. But why are we afraid of them. Now they are in hiding. If we leave Iraq, and they resurfaced, our cruise missiles in Saudi, and Turkey can be put in use. We don't have to physically there to fight them. Let them reappear so we can target them. Now they are hiding in the dark, and we are exposed. We cannot win this asymmetrical warfare. We did not win it in Vietnam, we did not win it in Somalia, and we won't win it in Iraq. But we can leave. The more we drag our feet there, trying to save our face, the more damage the terrorists can inflict on us.

The world is huge. There are so many places around the dark corners of the world that the terrorists can establish a base trying to launch attach on us. In fact they are everywhere, in North Africa, Afghanistan, in northeast desert of China's XinJiang Province. Why is Iraq so unique among these many hideout places for terrorists? Can we put our military in everyone of these places, like we do in Iraq? That would be insane.

The Bush administration has a completely wrong and dangerous priorities in fighting terrorists: securing our own borders should be the No. 1 priority. Gathering intelligence information about the terrorists should also be our priority. But Iraq war is draining our resources away from those true priorities. Just recently, Bush removed the border patrol agents in New Mexico and Arizona, and redeployed them to Iraq. If we cannot do our job to secure our home, why fight in Iraq?