IRAQ: Benefits by the reduction in terrorist activities(4-5 para main)
It was clear that the United States did not have a plan in place for handling the situation in Iraq after the main military operations were finished. This was a strategic mistake, accompanied later by numerous tactical mistakes. These arose from a misunderstanding of the situation in Iraq and of the principles governing Islamic society. As the result of these mistakes, Iraqis feel beset by numerous daily problems: shortages of energy supplies, water, and oil; high unemployment; and a lack of security.
These problems arose from a) the negligence and dearth of investment capital under Saddam Hussein’s rule, and b) incompetence, on the part of both the Coalition forces and the Iraqis themselves. Another important issue has been terrorist attacks, which destabilize Iraqi life and which are often directed against efforts to restore the country’s industrial base and infrastructure. The main argument against intervening in Iraq was that it might cause terrorism to increase. This accusation is false. It is true that up to 2003 there were no terrorist attacks in Iraq, which was free of international Islamic terrorist groups. But this does not mean that in that same time period there were no victims of terrorism. Statistics for the years 1968-2003 show that over thirty-five years Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror caused the death of 28,600 people a year, or 80 people a day. Fortunately the terrorist attacks after the fall of Baghdad have not managed to cause as many casualties, and their activity decreased after the parliamentary elections.
Let us next consider the areas in which Islamic terrorist activity occurs. If you ask a well educated European politician how many names of cities and towns in Iraq he knows, most probably he will not be able to name more than 8 or 10. They would be the cities in which terrorist attacks have occurred which were later publicized by the media. Besides...