The primary reason Osama gave for declaring war was that U.S. troops were occupying soil sacred to all Muslims -- Saudi Arabia, home to Mecca. After 9-11, we pulled our troops out at the request of the king. This was an admission that our vast military presence there did not make the Saudis safer, it made them more vulnerable.
Are we or the Saudis less secure after closing our bases?
The lesson applies to Iraq. For all his wickedness, Saddam was no threat to U.S. strategic interests. Smashed in the Gulf War, his military had lost its navy, air force and much of its armor, none of which had been replaced during the 10-year embargo. And no Iraqi had been found in any terror attacks in the post-Cold War era, save the abortive plot on the first President Bush in Kuwait, which was apparently payback for our countless attempts to kill Saddam.
The same lesson should have been learned from Lebanon. When Ronald Reagan sent Marines into the middle of that civil war, we lost 241 in the barracks bombings.
When the Marines departed, the Hezbollah attacks stopped. What did it avail us to go into Lebanon? How are we less secure after we pulled out?
Undeniably, U.S. combat troops can defend regimes and kill our enemies. Equally undeniably, in the Islamic world, the presence of U.S. troops is an irritant to the population, an instigator of insurrection and a recruiting cause for al-Qaida.
In his famous memo of October 2003, Donald Rumsfeld asked: "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"
With 3,000 dead Americans since then, 25,000 wounded, scores of thousands of Iraqis dead, and 150,000 troops still fighting four years later, do we not have the answer to Rumsfeld's question?
"Is our current situation such that 'the harder we work, the behinder we get'?" asked Rumsfeld in 2003. Yep, and it is the same in 2007.
Yet, what do we hear? On to Tehran. On to Pakistan. Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.