Reasons favoring war in Iraq:

1) Strategic initiative: Bin Lauden must attack the U.S. Army in Iraq. He knows that if the U.S. is successful, the ‘cancer’ of freedom will spread. He must react to our move. Forcing your enemy to react to your moves is desirable in warfare of any type.

2) Better to have enemies who are willing to risk their lives and kill others to attack our army. It is much more difficult to kill someone who is holding a machine gun and has artillery support than a family walking through a shopping mall.

3) The war in Iraq is drawing extremists into Iraq. This stretches the ‘terrorist’ army more than ours. After all, they do not have the numbers we do. Not to mention the match-up. Seems like a good way to get killed, attacking our army. The ‘terrorist’ army does not have the resources that we do. It is expensive to wage war. They can’t match our resources: Weapons, munitions, financial resources. Conventional forces engaged in irregular combat want to force more combat. This allows the conventional side to gain more advantage regarding weapons and firepower, greater numbers, and greater resources. This is the theory behind the ‘surge’. Other wars that Islamic ‘extremists’ would support can’t be supported nearly as well. Sudan and Lebanon come to mind. This viewpoint would expect terrorist activity to fall in other places besides Iraq and Afghanistan. The Palestinian attempt at democracy can proceed with far less outside interference. The Arabs themselves will tell us that the Palestinian-Israeli problem is a key part of the war against terrorism. If the Palestinians can build a true democracy, the Arabs will ultimately win the war against terrorism.

4) The war in Iraq makes ‘terrorists’ and supporters stand out. Many people believe that the war is creating new ‘terrorists’. The other side of the coin is that the war is making them take a public stand. Just because we can see so many more now does not necessarily mean that all of them are new ones. Is this not one of the major problems with fighting terrorism? Knowing who they are and who supports them?

5) Places the war on terror into Arab hands with our support. The worst enemies of the French resistance during the occupation (1940-1944) were not the Germans. The worst enemies were French who were helping the Germans. In Vietnam, the Vietnamese who fought on our side knew the enemy better than we did. In the war in Iraq, the Arabs know who the ‘terrorists’ and their supporters are better than we do. The war is enabling friendly Arabs to identify them more readily and is giving them the ability to deal with them in a more forceful fashion.

6) War in Iraq is a Civil War that is taking place throughout Islam. Many of the people who are fighting us in Iraq and elsewhere believe in the ‘authentic’ laws in the Koran that are so hostile to the rest of the world. Many of the ‘Laws’ of Islam have to change. This is our fight because of the issues involved. The concept of Jihad has to go. No way will Islam ignore this without violence. The world cannot allow a large population like Islam to kill others and seize their property because they are not Muslim. The world cannot allow the belief that you can kill ‘occupiers’ just because they conquered a country that has the same ‘religion’ as you. The law that states the penalty for leaving Islam is death must change. The payment of Tribute because someone is not a Muslim must end. Stoning anyone to death must end. These are some of the issues that are worth risking your life for. The United States government agrees. We have already fought wars over many of these types of issues in the past.