Sow more war, reap more terrorism

Shortly before the war in Iraq began George Bush visited Knoxville Tennessee where I was living at the time. I went with a group of friends to an anti-Bush rally that was kept in a "free-speech zone" far enough away from Bush that he was sure to never see us.

I made my own sign that simply said, "Sow more war, reap more terrorism."

This recent story illustrates what I was thinking when I made the sign:

The terror attacks at Glasgow Airport and London were a calculated act of revenge intended to bring the carnage of Baghdad to Britain's streets, investigators have revealed.

Security sources have briefed senior politicians that the failed assaults of last weekend were most likely part of a "profoundly political campaign" to punish the UK for its part in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

I've heard the talk radio slogan that "we have to fight them there so they don't fight us here." Unfortunately, the fact that we're fighting them there makes it much more likely that new terrorists, who were ambivalent about the US before the Iraq invasion, are going to attack us here. The Iraq invasion is creating the next generation of terrorists.

Killing innocent people abroad doesn't make us safer at home.

The article later states that, "Intelligence experts are also deeply concerned that white converts to Islam could be the next group used by terrorists to throw investigators off the scent." That echoes the argument I made against profiling on a number of occasions, including in the comments of a BFS post last August. Policy decisions based on anger and prejudice will only hurt ourselves in the long run.