Al Qaeda

I've been thinking about the war in Iraq, if in fact it is a war rather than a hostile occupation, and the oft-cited argument that we are fighting it over there so we don't have to fight it here--that is, 'here' in the U.S. and not in my (junior) suite. It sounds a good reasoning at first blush, especially if one has some potent meds onboard.

The reasoning requires one to believe that the enemies of the most powerful nation on Earth--I think we can still make that claim--will submissively engage our very capable fighting forces over there hitting our formidable and lethal war machine head-on simply because we've deployed in Iraq. In other words, it supposes that Al Qaeda reasons in the following fashion: The most deadly killing force on the planet has been sent to Iraq, let's take it on against all odds rather than to continue clandestine operations against a largely unprotected citizenship on U.S. soil.

It is good for our interests that Al Qaeda mindlessly attacks us at the point of our greatest strength. It is comforting to note that our enemies can be lured into attacking us at distant points merely because our armed forces are there. In the old days, enemies would prefer to attack where our forces were absent. Different times, different lies.