None of the arguments I've heard throughout the years have quite reached the absurdity level of this one particular point that advocate after advocate have used to justify the occupation of a country in shambles and the continuing waste of money, the continuing casualties of American lives, and the forgoing of many attempts to stop this event.
Simply put, if we declare a static date to pull out all troops from the country of Iraq, two things will happen that will equal the "end of the world":
1) Iraq and its terrorists will declare themselves the "winner" and proclaim that they defeated the mighty USA.
2) Terrorists will follow us home and kill more Americans, just like they did on September 11th.
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To address point one: Of course Iraq won't declare itself the winner of this war, because there is no war to declare itself the winner of. So we can nix that in the butt.
Secondly, terrorists won't peek out from their cover just to brag to the world that they defeated the USA. Hell, if that happens, no doubt you will get some videotape from a cave by some terrorist cell telling the world they won, but they don't realize that they haven't won anything. The US is still there, and still just as able to continue searches in Afghanistan to find the leadership cells of these terrorist organizations. After all, the only terrorists that have infiltrated Iraq are the Iraqis being recruited by Afghan orgs. Leave the country and those terrorist cells will have no recuiting base in Iraq anymore. So, to use the argument that terrorism will be able to say it prevailed over the US is futile, and no one will believe it.
Second, the main "meat" of the argument, is the fact that as soon as the last troops leaves Iraqi soil, them damn terrorists will hop on the next Baghdad-New York flight and kill more Americans...
The reason why this can't happen is because of the combined paranoia of America and the absence of terrorists to perform this task. As outlined above, there would be no more recruitment base in Iraq, and in Afghanistan, the cells have already been hunted down to the point that if they try to reveal themselves in this way, they will surely be eliminated.
This will be an ongoing topic of mine, but to close this blog, all I have to say is this:
You have done basically all there is to do in the country of Iraq. I disagree STRONGLY with your justification of it, and what you did to the national infrustructure, but the damage is done. Therefore, it is only logical that you plan to leave the region as soon as feasibly possible. Syria has proven that peaceful and graduated withdrawal of troops is possible (when they left Lebanon), so take their, among other, example and formulate a better plan than letting already-lame duck Bush veto most plans, and the Dem/Repub hopefuls squabbling over the rest.
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I agree with your assessment of these points: they're feeble at best. I am curious as to who is making these claims though. Any particular politicians? Or have you just heard comments walking around town?
I want to say that I heard these from a particular politician or well known person, but since I cannot provide a name at the moment, I don't want to make my argument seem any weaker or nonvalid. Until I can come across who it was that said that leaving Iraq in a harried state would only allow terrorists to follow us home, I guess my word is all you'll have to go by. I'll try to find it, though...
But I am pretty sure I heard the Bush administration claiming this at one point.
You remove the troops too soon and Iraq will fall. The new government is to frail to stand completely on its own. We are not done there yet. I would like to see a draw down in the number of troops there but I will let the military leaders who know more then the average person does about fighting a war make that call.
As for the point that terrorist will not come after us if we leave because they will have no recruitment bases is absurd. They will have more people flocking to their cave opening if we leave because people will think that we a banned them. This will cause more attack on our soil not less. We are there and we should not leave until we know that the government that we help to make can stand on its own.
Also you are paraphrasing something that president Bush said
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. ~The Preamble