Paul is an idiot on this. These Jihadists were against us LOOOOONG before we became “occupiers.”
I doubt leavening Iraq, Afghanistan would make a difference. The world wide jihad would continue., The followers of the moon god have only one purpose in mind … world domination.
The war between Islam and US is a culmination of events from the founding of Isreal with US backing, supporting Arab monarchies against Arab nationalist governments, later supporting nationalistic Arab regimes which became corrupt against the average Arab on the street in order to counter Islamic fundamentalism and the NATURE of Islamic fundamentalism. Would the US have conflict with Islam if we did not back the founding of Israel, would the US have a conflict with Islam as we got involve in defending our oil source against the Soviets in the Cold War and later Islamic fundamentalist Iran, etc, etc. I think we will still have conflict but at a different scale and intensity. Lesson from this conflict is when the US tries to get involve with regional and internal affairs of other nations, we risk reaping what we sow. HOWEVER I DO NOT AGREE WITH PAULBOTS THAT THE SOLUTION IS TO SAY WE ARE SORRY AND JUST WALK AWAY. I think the anger in the Arab street is to the point that they will not accept sorry and view such act as weakness and it will only embolden them to come after us. At this point we have no choice but fight. When this war on terrorism is finally won or over, we as Americans need to evaluate the notion that we need to be like everyone else before us, that we need to be an “empire” in order to prove we are a superpower. Suffering and injustice is the way of the world outside of our borders, and there is not much we can do about it. The US is blessed with two oceans, no major superpower on our borders, plenty of resources, and a unique American notion of liberty to concentrate on building a great nation and standard of living based on noninterferrence and trade.