Another logic-defying leap in support of our Iraq policy

In his blog yesterday at FrontPage Magazine, my esteemed editor David Horowitz expresses, in passing, the conventional pro-Bush wisdom about the necessity of the Iraq occupation:

“… if we weren’t fighting these bastards in Iraq we would probably be fighting them in Washington and New York, and that is why we must win and to win we must destroy them.”

I confess that this argument has never made the slightest sense to me. It seems like a complete non sequitur. Perhaps Mr. Horowitz could write a follow-up item in which he explains why, of all the possible measures we might take to protect America, the policy of parking our troops in Iraq and letting them be blown up by terrorists is the sine qua non of defending America from a terrorist attack? Specifically, how does our military engagement over there prevent U.S. jihadists from launching an attack over here? Or how does it prevent a jihadist in Europe from flying to the U.S. and launching an attack?

Furthermore, in the full version of the sentence quoted above, Horowitz isn’t just stating the opinion that America’s presence in Iraq is the only way to protect New York and Washington; he is making belief in that opinion one of his proofs of patriotism:

“[A] Patriot will probably understand that if we weren’t fighting these bastards in Iraq we would probably be fighting them in Washington and New York, and that is why we must win and to win we must destroy them.”

I generally agree with Horowitz’s distinctions between patriotic and unpatriotic criticism of American policies. But does he really mean to say that, in order to be considered “probably” a patriot, a person must believe that there is a specific causal link between our ongoing fight with terrorists in Iraq and the prevention of terrorist attacks in America?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 24, 2005 11:29 AM | Send