Who would have thought it?
A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Yes indeed, invading Iraq, showing a militaristic and insensitive face of American politics, demonstrating a sense of global imperialism, cultural ignorance, denial of flaws, and absolute lack of self-questioning has made the threat of terrorism worse rather than better for the American public. That’s the conclusion of the largest survey of global terrorism by the American intelligence agencies since 11th September 2001.
For an example of the lack of self-questioning, let’s look at a nice quote from a recent White House report entitled ‘9/11 Five Years Later: Success and Challenges’:
We have done much to degrade Al Qaeda and its affiliates and to undercut the perceived legitimacy of terrorism.
The Bush administration continues to assert that they are winning ‘the war against terror’ while their own agencies are saying the exact opposite. We’ve all been saying the opposite for a long time now: attacking a country in the middle-east without provocation or legitimate evidence of planned attacks, and without a plan for how to improve the conditions for people in the country after the invasion (by direct order of Donald Rumsfeld) was always going to solidify and justify extremist arguments against America and its allies.
So, invading Iraq has made America and its allies more, rather than less, at risk from terrorism. In other news: jumping off cliffs frequently results in injury. Some might consider that to simply be logic, rather than a revelation, but it appears that sometimes it really is needed that the obvious has to be driven home with a hammer.