After the war in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda came out relatively unscathed and went on to do a good job draining American intel simply doing things
like positioning a guy with a turban and a camera near a bridge and
leaking clues on the web. By the same token, the CIA and FBI would be
gathering terrorist suspects never to know whether or not they were
indeed terrorists. The fact that some were was enough to derail Al Qaeda's future attacks because Al Qaeda never knew just how much America was learning from these guys. This cat and mouse would not go on indefinitely; the possibility of a suitcase bomb killing 500,000 citizens and causing a trillion dollars damage in a place like Manhattan was all too imminent if nothing more was done.
Afghanistan was another typical American war where the US used a
coalition and few American casualties were sacrificed. This, along with Desert Storm which did nothing to remove the tyrant, Saddam Hussein, and abandoned those who tried to oust him afterwards, the American cut and run in Somalia and Lebanon, the refusal to respond to attacks on two of our African embassies, the USS Cole attack, and the first attempt on the World Trade Center, all contributed to a total lack of fear of anything the United States might do to countries like Saudi Arabia and Syria for allowing funding and training of Jihadists in those countries.
Bush knew he had to change that attitude if we were ever going to keep a lid on terror because it's impossible to defend a country as large and free as the United States against a suitcase bomb. We had to take the war to 'them' outside the country. Afghanistan was the beginning of getting a tactical foothold on the boundaries of rogue states; Iraq was the last piece. Of course, Bush was going into Iraq no matter what the UN or Security Council decided. These allegations of 'lies' are naive; how could a president say 'I don't really care about weapons of mass destruction, I just want respect from the Saudis so Al Qaeda's purse strings get cut'? Winston Churchill said 'in wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies'.
Going into Iraq and being willing to take 1700 plus casualties is getting the attention of Saudi Arabia and Syria. This is not at all 'typical' of America's usual fear of dying in a war. Soon, the Saudis will have to fish or cut bait instead of placating both the West and their indigenous fundamentalist Al Quaeda sympathizers.
Saudi Arabia is a wealthy state with a history of friendship with the US. The present Pakistan leadership has irrevocably chosen the US side, Iran has helped the US in the past even up to aiding the US in defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is Syria, a police state with a lousy economy, which has several terrorist training camps and is trying to destabilize and defeat democracy in Lebanon and Iraq. Syria will succumb if threatened just as it did when Turkey said it would invade if Syria continued to host the PKK terror group and send them across the border to murder Turkish soldiers and citizens. Syria claimed it was doing no such thing; but when the Turkish army was formed and ready on the border, the PKK attacks suddenly stopped.
It's time Bush went back to his aggressive posture from his first term and began bombing the terrorist paths leading from Syria, along with some other well chosen targets there.
See article: www.nationalreview.com/hanson