I'll tell them, "welcome back. It was a crazy notion that you had and you paid dearly for it but I knew you'd have to learn for yourselves."
You sound as if making them "pay dearly" is going to be as easy as invading Baghdad.. Rather callous, don't you think?
Right now the Islamic militant movement is rather limited, and certainly disorganized after the war in Afghanistan, and being cut off from Saudi and other sources of funding.
If we pull out, we'll certainly be sending the message to the entire region that we're not willing to support their struggle against Islamic militancy (certainly this will be the case in with the Saudi royals), and that the militants are more powerful and deserve to be followed.
That's going to lead to, not just a few thousand Jihadists, but potentially hundreds of thousands, if not MILLIONS, of them..
And it won't be just 135,000 American boys and girls over there fighting them.. It will be 1/2 million or more, with their deaths counted in the thousands, and potentially in the tens of thousands.
And even if we "make them pay dearly", what then? Do we occupy them again so they can wage a guerilla war against us that we seemingly don't seem to have the will to wage?
I really don't think you've contemplated the Pandora's box our departure will open up in the region.
Hawk |
