After the Iraq invasion, President Bush has mentioned several times that the world is a safer place now.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washingt..._saddam?mode=PF



But since then attacks on American soliders have increased, deaths of American soliders have increased. And the current attacks in Turkey.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...urkey_explosion



This last attack occurred today(Nov 20).

The question is:

Is the world a safer place or not,after Saddam was driven from power in Iraq.

Possibly safer in that Saddam Hussein is no longer the threat he was (arguable as to it's degree, but not zero certainly). Certainly no less safe, the prospect of these bombing was present before the Iraq war. The terrorists (possibly the same as those in Iraq) have simply chosen good timing for their cause.

My take is that it's -- of course -- no less dangerous (geez, what WILL those politicians think to say next? ).

But al Qaeda and other terrorist groups seem a LOT more active lately in a lot more places than before. I think our actions might have had the unintended consequences of adding some other places on the list of terrorist targets that weren't on the list before. Instead of just aiming at America and Americans, al Qaeda seems intent on also attacking allies of ours.

The first attack in Turkey was against the Jewish community (as we all know they were already on the hit-list) as for the attack on the British I'm really not sure (there may have been others even before 9-11. However, I'll add a reminder that it is silly to have your foreign policy based on whether it will anger these murderers.

Never said it would. Just observing that there seem to be more targets being considered, so maybe we're not safer overall.

Oh I know, just heading that possible conclusion of at the pass.

On another note I think the timing of these attacks in Saudi Arabia and Turkey as well as the escalation in Iraq is interesting. It seems to me that this is a temporary offensive and as such doesn't mean we less safe over-all

They may be active, but against the wrong people. The SA bombing couple weeks ago just made them more enemies. Biting the hand that feeds you isn't really smart. Attacking fellow muslims turns extermists off.

I think today's attack in Turkey is like the attack in SA: Detraction of terrorist recruits. Instead, there will be an increase in recruits for hunting these killers down and beating them in the head.

Al-Queda's been acting stupid lately in the way of what targets to hit. First, they attack a residential compound that houses no Americans, but houses mid-eastern civilians. Then, Turkey. What's next? Trying to assassinate the Atoyllah of Iran??

I beg to differ on the temporary offensive. I believe it will get a lot worst before it gets better(if it ever does). My analogy would be to compare it to a hornets nest. Once you stir it up, all off them come after you. And they don't stop until you are to a safe place, like in your house or a building.

By invading Iraq we have given them additional reasons for and convincing other groups to join them. Invading Iraq was like pouring gasoline on a enraging inferno. Other groups that may have listened to America at one time, will no longer listen to us because of the attitude of the Bush adminstration.

Heh since we're going to go with analogies I see a different one.

Namely given the power of the US to inflict significant harm on the terrorists and their organizations (unlike some poor dope with a stick up against a nest of hornets) it more like going up against the hornets with a tank of insecticide (military power, and shutting down funding) and a poor bee suit (homeland security, bless their 'ittle hearts ) the hornets are going to mad and you're going to catch a few stings but that's only until those hornets die

I've done it before...

Edited to add:

and GoAmerica is right, as I've said before about the terrorists in Iraq, these people are sealing their own doom...

Interesting perspective. Just what terrorist groups 'listened to America' prior to Iraq? And are you seriously suggesting that human beings slaughter innocents because they don't like the 'attitude of the Bush administration'?

This penchant for blaming the victim only serves to create more victims.

I do not think it is just the attitude of the Bush administration but also its actions. I agree that invading Iraq did fuel ongoing fire. After all the Terrorists have been sending out messages that not only are they going after the U.S. but also its allies and anyone that has help support the actions of the U.S. .

Holding Politic's and Where Each of stand, we are regretabley stuck with a good portion of these problems! "I help you and down the road I give you money and supplies to protect yourself from your enemies, and later as you pick yourself up you in turn do me a favour!" This multiplies and you end up with freinds, neutral allies, enemies and people you have stepped on or have been stepped on by other's. You all know this ,but sometime's we forget that we live in the best Country in the world,(yes we have faults)but we have not got that way overnight and we have been fighting all over the world.

Personally, I think we have no choice, You dont think Great Britain, or any other of the great powers remaining want to step in and clean their messes up! I'm not perfect and eather are Americans as a whole, but we all try to make things better in our own way!

That's right. Terrorists like Al-queda have been attacking the nations that are participating in the war in Iraq because murderers with a political agenda. They attack Italian soldiers to get Italy out of Iraq, they attack the British Consulte in Turkey because the Brits are in Iraq, they attacked Saudi Arabia TWICE because they are arresting Al-queda members, which Al-queda sees as "colloberation with the infidels"

And they attacked us because we have a base in SA (thinking it is used to "invade" Mecca) & because we help Israel fight their terrorist problem

No, I don't think the world is a safer place. For every bad guy that has been captured or killed, it seems like three more are bombing countries in the Middle East. This is a much more difficult conflict than one where two or more armies engage each other and carve up the territory after the enemy is vanquished.

As long as there are bombs and rocket launchers in the hands of fanatical volunteers willing to destroy themselves to hit a target of America or its allies, we'll never be truly safe. It's just a matter of degree and distance from the Middle East that makes us feel relatively immune here.

That was true before 9/11, I don't think so today. At least I hope not.

Most of the world is waking up to the fact that Islamic terrorists will stop at nothing to challenge those who dare not 'believe' as they do. I know that Bush and Blair won't be pushed off their game. Quite a few other world leaders are also climbing on board.

The backlash from the more recent bombings may be just enough to turn the tide in full. Now all we need to do is get some of our own misguided countrymen aboard.

I would say it's a point of view. The war is being fought on their turf. I would think we agree this is a good thing. Another thing is that, while trajic we are losing soldiers every day or every other day it pales in comparison with the wholesale slaughter to Iraqi citizens by Saddam's regime. On the whole I would say yes it's better, but like many others this is a long drawn out battle and there will be good days and bad days.

cusbilla

Oh well and everyone knows that all they have over there in the ME is a bunch of hornets.

I never believed the correlation of Iraq/terrorism/9-11 that the Bush admin eluded to for many months prior to the war on Iraq..yet now how can anyone claim there isn't one? Now one has been made and I think it is utterly incorrect to claim that we would be safe in our own homes or buildings because that goes against everything we have taken witness to in re: to al Qaeda.



Is that really true anymore? I know it is or I should say was a common argument against American mentality towards war and the constant engaging of it to claim Americans have never had to fight a foreign invader on their own soil..had never witnessed enemy war on their land...but that is not true anymore since 9-11. Which was a pretty apocalyptic and horrendous act of war from where I viewed it...so I can only imagine what it must have felt like to those in the US.

When I mentioned groups, I was referring to Muslims. There are different factions and contrary to your belief there are some factions that are for peace and or striving for that. By invading Iraq we have given the Muslims,a reason for looking at us in a different perspective. As an example, some Iraqis that welcomed us are now going over to the terrorist side because of injustice to them and their families.

And I was just mentioning the hornets nest as an analogy,not a high-tech example. But since you mentioned it. Take an example of the largest animal in the world in a body of water. Add little creatures called the piranha and see which one comes out the winner.

Well, the whale would win either 2 ways,

a) the piranha would die in the salt water
they would gorge themselves on the blubber at the whale would continue on it's way.

cusbilla

What you are not including in your example is the piranhas environment. You said they couldn't live in salt water,which means they are out of their element. The piranha(which we substituted for the terrorists) are in their element in the Middle East(Iraq,Turkey).

So we have to substitute the biggest animal that lives in the piranhas environment to make it an accurate test. Agreed.

A safer place? Maybe, but for whom?

I believe this rhetoric of safety is just a verbal trick to comfort people in their grief and fears. People (and voters) need to be reassured, so I'm not surprised that Mr. Bush justifies his war that way.

Firstly, can I just say that I'm British and live in London. There have been no Al Qaeda attacks before or since 9/11 on the British Mainland.

Secondly, "The world" is bit of difficult phrase. And "safer" is also a tricky word.

Thirdly, you also have to factor in the facts about Iraq. Was it a danger in the first place? Did Iraq ever once threaten America? Did it ever once invade a democracy? Did it ever have strong links to Al Qaeda or other Islamic Militants? No, no and no.

In 2001, Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice in separate interviews said that Iraq's military capability was essentially negligible since GW1 and they saw the containment policy as doing its job. Then, after 9/11, suddenly it was WMDs all over the place and Iraq being almost nuclear and so on.

Not one WMD or wmd manufaturing facility has been found. He buried a chunk of his airforce directly in the sand, rendering them useless in the process. His infrastructure had been bombed daily for 12 long years. You seriously expect a country like this to be any danger? We do not invade countries who merely dislike us and, if they had plenty of resources and manpower, they would build nasty weapons. Not in a civilised world.

These stories of Iraq gassing the Kurds is debateable. The New York Times has published an article showing that members of a US military school found that the gas used was actually only ever used by Iran and, as it was during the Iran/Iraq war, it was probably an off-target gas attack by the Iranians. But this is brushed aside to keep the agenda flowing.

Iraq is now a much more dangerous place. It hasn't been a danger to the US at any stage. The world's richest country with a defense budget of $400bn (more than the rest of the developed world's defense spending put together) was never going to "lose" to the mayfly of Iraq. And, in the same way Reagan absurdly pumped up the Guatemalan communist guerillas as some major threat to the existance of the US, yet Bush somehow made America think Iraq had to be flattened or else it could do untold damage to America (remember the "mushroom clouds" comment from Rice?). We now hear so much from the CIA, MI5, Australian intelligence, saying the evidence was entirely misrepresented and distorted. Deliberately. To push for war. Wolfowitz himself told congress that the case for Iraq was built on "no new evidence" since 1998. The Project for the New American Century (set up by Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Feith, Abrams etc.) had wanted to invade Iraq in 1997. Members (ahem, Wolfowitz) had stated this as a strong possibility in his defense review in 1991.

Actually the report to the Pentagon from the US Army War College did not absolve Iraq from the Kurd carnage, but it was clear not to lay the entire responsibility at it's feet either.

The rhetoric sounds a lot sexier when people say "Saddam gassed his own people" as if he dropped a chem weapon in downtown Bagdad. But countries are allowed to use WMD as a defensive tactic inside their own borders (and why we supplied Saddam and there never were any war crimes) and that's exactly what Sadam did 11 times. The war college report, written by a senior CIA agent and two other analysts, was clear to point out that the evidence seemed to indicate the Kurds were gassed by a blood agent - something Iraq did not have and Iran did.

Bascially, Iraq was at war with Iran on a border populated by Kurds. Iraq did what many other countries have done to defend itself. Does this make Saddam a saint? Of course not. The Iran/Iraq war was horrible and bloody. But the "Saddam gassed his own people" crap is more hype than substance.

As far as invading Kuwait (another war in which he never used WMD when he was expected to), Saddam informed our state department he was going to invade because they were slant drilling into his fields. We did not object until the world did.

99% of the wars in the world are a result of land disputes. This was no different, but we somehow hold him to be a larger threat than the rest of US (yeah, we've fought wars for land too) for doing what everybody else does. It doesn't make it right, but it doesn't make it uncommon either.

The world was safer when we had most other countries in the world helping us to police it. Now that we've become the world's only cop because we made everybody hate us, it's our 100,000 troops against 1.6 billion Muslims.

We call that safer?

Interesting perception. Do you have links that support these claims?

cusbilla

Its not debateable it happened. Just because Iran had the same type of weapons doesn't mean the Iraqi government didn't perpetrate the attacks.



Lessons of Halabja

Not only did they use them on their own people, but they used them on the Iranians dozens of times as well.



CHEMICAL WARFARE IN THE IRAQ-IRAN WAR

To debunk your claim that Iraq didn't have the weapons used in Halabja I give you this.



New York Times op-ed, Stephen Pelletiere "just plain wrong"

The fact that he didn't appear to have actively available WMDs from 1991 I think renders the Halabja atrocity (whoever did it) irrelevent as a justification for war in 2003. Especially as the US did nothing about it at all. In fact the US government kept allowing WMD sales to Iraq upto the first Gulf War. And this is leaving aside the far worse atrocities perpetrated by China, Post-Communist Russia and other non-"axis of evil" countries.

The "world" was made a safer place once Iraq was expelled from Kuwait and Iraq was put under heavy observation and no-fly zones. Then he had no useful WMD and he had no opportunity to re-establish his conventional capability (to paraphrase Colin Powell in May 2001).

The utterly scandalous UN sanctions (which the US only tried to target rather than blanket once Colin Powell was in the cabinet) killed way more Iraqi civilians than Saddam ever did.

Civilians dying is an issue but the US government refuses to count how many are killed in recent wars. They do not have figures for Afghanistan or Iraq. Have a look, you'll find no government figures at all. So we never know the full cost. Colin Powell in the first gulf war, when asked about civilian casualties said, "That's not a figure I'm particularly interested in". Other senior military men have replied similarly.

If the war was about human rights, why did the coalition fail to follow the Geneva Convention on almost every count (parading PoWs, parading dead PoWs, holding people without charge or trial, holding minors without charge or trial, killing civilians without warning, not protecting vital public buildings (except the ministries of Oil and Information), not holding PoWs in humane conditions etc.)? If the war was about WMDs, why have none been found after 6 months (remember Rumsfeld et al talking about "knowing" where they were?)? If the war was about regime change and only regime change, the UN would not allow it and it would be illegal.

The main crux is, did Iraq have any hope of doing any real damage to any country now or in the foreseeable future? The answer is increasingly a firm "no". Iraq is now a hive of violence of an uncontrollable nature. The invasion of Afghanistan scattered Al Qaeda members to the four corners and we lost a great many. Pakistan is an ally despite being a primary source for terrorist recruits and not being a democracy. Saudi Arabia was the home country for most of the (supposed) 9/11 hijackers and is the home country of Bin Laden. Saudi has now started to feel the hatred Al Qaeda always had for the house of Saud very recently. It is funded from within, however.

These two wars failed miserably to make the war a safer place. Why?

A war on Afghanistan is exactly what Bin Laden would want. It gets him recruits. There is not one shred of evidence that the Taliban knew in advance about 9/11. So why invade them? Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda because the government was secular, not fervently Islamic. Invading Iraq will also have gotten Al Qaeda further recruits.

Another problem is this sudden description of 9/11 as an act of war. Legally it was a criminal act. An act of murder. You cannot have a war with an NGO. Al Qaeda is in fact an organisation without a nationality. The IRA were never considered an army, despite their name. They were tried as terrorists, as criminals.

The situation is very complicated but the basic facts (i.e. deaths from terrorist actions) show the world is less safe than in 2000, for instance, and getting even less safe.