According to an intelligence report declassified by President Bush Tuesday, the Iraq war has become a “cause celebre” for international terrorists, fueling more terrorism than it has quelled.
This should not be news – in 2005, the State Department omitted data from its annual report on terrorism that reflected a greater than three-fold increase in “significant” terrorist attacks around the world from 2003 to 2004, including a nine-fold increase within Iraq itself.
At a press conference Tuesday, Bush called his critics “naive” and accused them of ignoring “20 years of history,” citing previous terrorist attacks. But the issue is not whether terrorism existed before Iraq – it’s whether the war is making us safer now.
A University of Maryland poll has found that three-quarters of Iraqis favor U.S. withdrawal. In Vietnam we learned that fighting for greater ideals can bog us down in local conflicts. The question is how long it will take us to learn the same lesson again.
Monday, October 19th, 2026