STUPID AND EVIL

By David Podvin

Conservatives believe America must fight the terrorists over there or we will have to fight them over here, so George W. Bush has deliberately transformed Iraq into the Middle Eastern version of a roach motel. The concept is that while Americans maintain occupation villains from throughout the Islamic world will flock to the country and – as the commercial famously boasts – they will check in but they won’t check out.

The strategy has two major flaws, the first of which is that it’s demonstrably stupid. Al Qaeda has more members now than it had on 9/11. Rather than being a graveyard for the jihadist movement Iraq has become an incubator, producing terrorist hatchlings by the ton. No matter what transpires in Iraq Bush’s enhancement of the al Qaeda membership roll will inevitably make America less secure. This disturbing little fact would deter normal people from staying the course, but if conservatives were normal people they wouldn’t be conservatives.