Is it true when Bush says 'the enemy would follow us here'?

[OrangeEmpire]

Is there any truth to 'the enemy would follow us here?'
By William Douglas
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - It’s become President Bush’s mantra, his main explanation for why he won’t withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq anytime soon.

In speech after speech, in statement after statement, Bush insists that “this is a war in which, if we were to leave before the job is done, the enemy would follow us here.”

The line, which Bush repeated Wednesday in a speech to troops at California's Fort Irwin, suggests a chilling picture of warfare on American streets.

But is it true?

Military and diplomatic analysts say it isn't. They accuse Bush of exaggerating the threat that enemy forces in Iraq pose to the U.S. mainland.

“The president is using a primitive, inarticulate argument that leaves him open to criticism and caricature,” said James Jay Carafano, a homeland security and counterterrorism expert for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy organization. “It’s a poor choice of words that doesn’t convey the essence of the problem - that walking away from a problem doesn’t solve anything.”

U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic experts in Bush's own government say the violence in Iraq is primarily a struggle for power between Shiite and Sunni Muslim Iraqis seeking to dominate their society, not a crusade by radical Sunni jihadists bent on carrying the battle to the United States.

Foreign-born jihadists are present in Iraq, but they're believed to number only between 4 percent and 10 percent of the estimated 30,000 insurgent fighters - 1,200 to 3,000 terrorists - according to the Defense Intelligence Agency and a recent study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a center-right research center.

“Attacks by terrorist groups account for only a fraction of insurgent violence,” said a February DIA report.

While acknowledging that terrorists could commit a catastrophic act on U.S. soil at any time - whether U.S. forces are in Iraq or not - the likelihood that enemy combatants from Iraq might follow departing U.S. forces back to the United States is remote at best, experts say.

James Lewis, a U.S. foreign policy analyst at CSIS, called Bush’s assertion oversimplistic, but added that there’s a slight chance a few enemy combatants could make their way to the United States after a U.S. troop withdrawal.

“There’s a grain of truth in Bush saying it’s better to fight them there rather than here, but it’s also overstated,” Lewis said. “It’s not like there’s going to be gun battles in the United States.”

Daniel Benjamin, the director of the Center on the United States and Europe at The Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank, agreed.

“There are very few foreign fighters who are going to be leaving the area because they don’t have the skills or languages that would give them access to the United States,” said Benjamin, who served as the National Security Council’s director for transnational threats from 1998 to 1999. “I’m not saying events in Iraq aren’t going to embolden jihadists. But I think the president’s formulations call for a leap of faith.”

"The war in Iraq isn't preventing terrorist attacks on America," said one U.S. intelligence official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he's contradicting the president and other top officials. "If anything, that - along with the way we've been treating terrorist suspects - may be inspiring more Muslims to think of us as the enemy."

Carafano and Lewis believe that a U.S. troop pullout would embolden Islamic jihadists, but that they’re much more likely to stay closer to home and spread violence to neighboring countries with poor records of combating terrorism, such as Somalia, Morocco, Algeria and perhaps Egypt, than they are try to penetrate America.

Increased terrorism in those places would tax the United States, which would have to deal with the economic costs, global refugees and health crises that combat in those countries could produce.

“The danger is not that they’ll follow us home,” Carafano said. “The problems will come to our doorstep, not the terrorists.”

Lewis of CSIS believes that a U.S. pullout could prompt some foreign fighters in Iraq to go home, head to Afghanistan to fight U.S. forces there or move to Europe, where Muslim anger is high and there are more Muslim communities to blend into.

“The United States is a distant (fourth),” he said. - source

Preposterous. Out of the question.

"The enemy would follow us here." Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable. Think about it. Think about the logistics that would be involved in an invasion of America of sufficient magnitude to seriously threaten American sovereignty.

First of all, the army so doing would have to be large enough and modern enough to have a chance against U.S forces and ultimately occupy America's major cities. They'd have to have sufficient fuel, ammunition, food, medical supplies, spare parts for their various tanks, artillery etc. They'd have to have reliable ways of getting it all from Iraq over here. This means safe supply lines not vulnerable to attack by America or her allies. Perhaps most significantly they'd have to get to our shores, somehow negotiating American fleets and air power. Out of the question, given the overwhelming superiority of American naval and air power.

Look at the trouble America, the world's premier military power is having in its occupation of Iraq; a nation whose level of military technology is decades behind. Now imagine the roles being reversed. Imagine a third world nation or even a coalition of them trying to finance and provide manpower for the occupation of the U.S. Goodness, Nazi Germany couldn't have done it. Imperial Japan couldn't have done it. Soviet Russia couldn't have done it. Red China can't do it. The galactic empire would probobly have a hard time of it.

The Islamic world could well conquor the west, but they won't do it militarily. They'll do it demographically. They're having lots of babies and we're not, and so we're having to shore up our dwindling numbers by accepting mass imigration from places that do have lots of babies. Like the Islamic world. But that's another topic.

With that said, terrorist threats remain a possibility. But as the article alludes to, the threat terrorism poses to America increases the more we engage ourselves in military adventures on the other side of the world.

Even if the worst assesments of Islamic militants are correct in that they're extremist fanatics whose ultimate goal is our complete destruction, the question becomes "so what?" Tighten up homeland security and start seriously screening immigration, at least from that part of the world. Beyond that, the most harm they'l likely do us is what they'l do to our troops in their part of the world, which they wouldn't be able to do if our troops weren't over there in the first place.

Thoughts?

 

[OWB]

Simply put, no, it's not true.

 

[therealUT]

I did not read all that (too lengthy, too close to close of business). However, I am going to have to agree with OWB. I do not think "the enemy will follow us here."

 

[hatvol96]

Anytime a topic starts with the six words that begin this one, I assume the answer is "No" and move on to other things.

 

[TennTradition]

Anytime a topic starts with the six words that begin this one, I assume the answer is "No" and move on to other things.

:lolabove:

 

[All Vol!]

far from the first time this administration has tailored its language to try and plant a seed of fear in the American mindset. "they will follow us here" is the latest example of an age-old strategy - literally - to scare up support for a difficult sell.

I am reminded of this oldie but goodie from the same doofus in pitching his case for the Iraq war: "America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud". :lolabove:

 

[g8terh8ter_eric]

Honestly if 30 million people can invade the US and no one do anything about it, I don't rule out anything.