Iraq war making us "less safe"? Ummm, no.

[Little-Acorn]

We've heard a lot of leftists screaming that the war in Iraq has made us less safe. But apparently it takes a lot of imaginitive "reporting" to reach that conclusion, and some twisting of statistics that rival the work of a pretzel factory.

All in a day's work for the leftists running their parts of the media, however.

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http://opinionjournal.com

from "Best of the Web"
by James Taranto

Terror on the Decline

Did the liberation of Iraq make America less safe? Conventional wisdom says yes, but Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria begs to differ. He notes that U.S. government figures show big increases in terrorism:

The U.S. government agency charged with tracking terrorist attacks, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), reported a 41 percent increase from 2005 to 2006 and then equally high levels in 2007. Another major, government-funded database of terrorism, the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terror (MIPT), says that the annual toll of fatalities from terrorism grew 450 percent (!) between 1998 and 2006. A third report, the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), also government-funded, recorded a 75 percent jump in 2004, the most recent year available for the data it uses.

But Zakaria notes that a Canadian think tank, the Simon Fraser Institute, argues that that attacks in Iraq, a war zone, should not be included:

Including Iraq massively skews the analysis. In the NCTC and MIPT data, Iraq accounts for 80 percent of all deaths counted. But if you set aside the war there, terrorism has in fact gone way down over the past five years. In both the START and MIPT data, non-Iraq deaths from terrorism have declined by more than 40 percent since 2001. (The NCTC says the number has stayed roughly the same, but that too is because of a peculiar method of counting.) In the only other independent analysis of terrorism data, the U.S.-based IntelCenter published a study in mid-2007 that examined "significant" attacks launched by Al Qaeda over the past 10 years. It came to the conclusion that the number of Islamist attacks had declined 65 percent from a high point in 2004, and fatalities from such attacks had declined by 90 percent.

The Simon Fraser study notes that the decline in terrorism appears to be caused by many factors, among them successful counterterrorism operations in dozens of countries and infighting among terror groups. But the most significant, in the study's view, is the "extraordinary drop in support for Islamist terror organizations in the Muslim world over the past five years." These are largely self-inflicted wounds. The more people are exposed to the jihadists' tactics and world view, the less they support them. An ABC/BBC poll in Afghanistan in 2007 showed support for the jihadist militants in the country to be 1 percent.

In Pakistan's North-West Frontier province, where Al Qaeda has bases, support for Osama bin Laden plummeted from 70 percent in August 2007 to 4 percent in January 2008. That dramatic drop was probably a reaction to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, but it points to a general trend in Pakistan over the past five years.

With every new terrorist attack, public support for jihad falls. "This pattern is repeated in country after country in the Muslim world," writes [study director Andrew] Mack. "Its strategic implications are critically important because historical evidence suggests that terrorist campaigns that lose public support will sooner or later be abandoned or defeated."

Power Line's John Hinderaker has a list of attacks on the U.S. and U.S. interests overseas starting in 1988 and, per Zakaria and Mack's advice, omitting those in Afghanistan and Iraq. The list has no new entries since October 2003. One may debate how decisive the liberation of Iraq was in diminishing terrorism, but anyone who argues that it's made us less safe ought to be laughed off stage.

 

[Canceled.LTroll.29]

Considering that most of Muslim's distaste for Western culture involves many liberal behaviors, they'd be the first to feel the wrath of jihad.

Since I've not seen any reports of lefties beheaded by Islamic warriors for indulging in the activities that libs indulge in, I'd say we're as safe as we ever were.

 

[FUCK THE POLICE]

Of course, because it's ridiculous to count innocent Iraqui women and children dying. They are not Americans, therefore they gave away their humanity and don't deserve life.

 

[FUCK THE POLICE]

Considering that most of Muslim's distaste for Western culture involves many liberal behaviors, they'd be the first to feel the wrath of jihad.

Since I've not seen any reports of lefties beheaded by Islamic warriors for indulging in the activities that libs indulge in, I'd say we're as safe as we ever were.

Because lefties were behaded by the assload for being gay before the war in Iraq. 7 years without a terrorist attack! Woot! That's like the foruth longest period of American history without a major foreign incursion, after 1780-1812, 1814-1941 and 1941-2001.

 

[Cypress]

Oh yeah, lets make the terrorism statistics go down, by NOT including the attacks on americans and iraqis in Iraq.

What a crock of Bush loving hackery.

Let me ask you this Little Nut:

If you had access to a crystal ball on the EVE of your war, and you knew there weren't going to be any WMD, you knew we weren't going to be treated as liberators, you knew Saddam didn't have collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, you knew we would spend upwards of a trillion dollars or more, you knew 150,000 american soldiers would be bogged down fighting a violent insurgency for up to a decade, you knew that the cost in blood would be 35,000 (plus) american dead and wounded and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis....

Would you STILL have supported invading Iraq in March 2003:?


If you say, yes, you would have still supported invading, your lying.

 

[Onceler]

"One may debate how decisive the liberation of Iraq was in diminishing terrorism, but anyone who argues that it's made us less safe ought to be laughed off stage."\

You fucking moron. How can you calculate how many attacks over the next 50 years will be the offspring of this war, which has served as a "cause celebre" for Al Qaeda and been a boon for their recruiting efforts? Do you have any idea how long 9/11 took to plan?

I've really had it with you fools. Why is it so hard to admit you were wrong? How badly do things have to go before you think, hey, maybe that wasn't such a great idea after all?

 

[FUCK THE POLICE]

They'll kill you and me and themselves and freedom long before that time, Onceler.

 

[uscitizen]

Prove to me one instance of where having troops in Iraq has thwarted a terrorist attack on USA soil ?

 

[Beefy]

We've heard a lot of leftists screaming that the war in Iraq has made us less safe. But apparently it takes a lot of imaginitive "reporting" to reach that conclusion, and some twisting of statistics that rival the work of a pretzel factory.

All in a day's work for the leftists running their parts of the media, however.

------------------

Yep, radical leftists such as Pat Buchanan, Charley Reese and Paul Roberts are driving this communist agenda of actually misrepresenting the Iraq war in order to trick the public into thinking it was not the most valiant, victorious pot of gold this country has ever unearthed.

4,000 dead Americans and counting, hundreds of thousands of dead middle eastern scum! Why, I can taste the triumph, and radical leftists like Buchanan and his ilk will never see it for the true glory that it is!

Go sign up for this glorious circle jerk! Stand proudly on the front lines, and show up such liberal pussies as Buchanan and Roberts! Show them what it is to be a true conservative! Go die for this valiant effort! I will support you if you do!