I got to thinking about this when posting my other entry... and I just decided that it needed to be in a post all on it's own.
On a lighter note. I was talking with Sam during astronomy lab - we TA for it, and the students were doing really well in lab the other night, no questions - and we were talking about Iraq, him having had a stint in the army and stuff. And we were talking about how no one ever argues for the side that it's good that America has troops in Iraq. He has a theory to support that side of the argument. It keeps all the terrorists focused on "killing" Americans, whom are over in Iraq, who are also trained and have big guns and knowledge to proper thwart their plans... instead of having the terrorists focus on "killing" the American populace in general, over here, who are much more defenseless against their plans.
I enjoy his theory, it makes sense in my mind. And also, I support the troops over there, since they are there, and they're not going to be living anytime soon it seems, I might as well support even though I'm against the fact that we're there in the first place. Sure, there may be a lot of "reasons" as to why we're there, to help them rebuild and start up their country once again. But we, America, didn't have any help. We fought it out with each other in the Civil War, and although there are still some after effects of the conclusion of that war, we seem to be doing just fine. I say let all the other countries get to where they "need" to be, progressive-wise, on their own. They have to want to do it, instead of having a superpower just come in and be like "this is what needs to happen, and it needs to happen now, whether you like it or not."
Sure, I'm okay with other more powerful countries helping out... when needed. I think of the World Wars. And I realize that my argument is not very strong when it comes to that. I don't know the background as well as I should, but then it has been about 4 years since I've studied any of the events involved in the War. So, back to the World Wars - Germany needed help to fix it's problem, and it asked, and it was given help. Things turned out alright in the end. But wow, what if it had gone the other way? How different would the world be. And yes, I do realize that I totally changed the subject and avoided continuing my argument. I'll look into that, eventually, and further define what I mean to say. Because it's time for class.
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I agree with his argument. These terrorists we're fighting in Iraq would be busy doing something else otherwise. What that something else is exactly, is up for debate.
The war in Iraq has caused a lot of casualties among terrorists. The head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq has said that 4,000 foreign fighters have been killed.
I'm glad that someone agrees with it, that it makes sense to them also. I did not have any figures like that, nor have I been able to look up anything to further validate his point, so thanks for that!