"10,000 Heroes" Reconsidered AGAIN(re: Richard Clarke)

In my post on the "10,000 Heroes" editorial, which makes the simplistic point that insurgent terrorism
is worse than the U.S. invasion of Iraq, I forebore to address the roots of terrorism.

The September 11th terrorists came from people who were upset about 1)the U.S. being mixed up in the Saudi Government
at the highest levels, 2) the perception that U.S. policy is pro-Israel and anti-Palestine, and 3) U.S. interference wherever wwe
are in the mid-east. When these people had no voices to speak to us, this was the only way they felt they could be heard. But God knows, we haven't gotten a simple message if we're sitting around simply saying that insurgent terrorism is bad.

Richard Clarke, the former Bush 43 security advisor, has written something in his monthly New York Times Magazine
column(6/19/05), that I think clarifies a lot. We enjoyed his book, Against All Enemies, before the 2004 elections.
He writes, "Opponents of 'early' departure of american forces say it would result in chaos in Iraq." We've destroyed the
country and no one wants to leave behind a humanitarian nightmare.

But Clarke asks if maybe the Iraqi civilian casualties are so high, and Iraqi police deaths even twice as high, higher than ours,
bcause we ARE still there! Though he isn't the first to say it, I wanted to kick myself for not having thought of that.

The republicans may be loathe to let go of Iraq, however. If we were to pull out and the situation eroded into civil war, it would totally confirm the bad PR(for them) that the war was a mistake.