What does it mean to “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here”? I can think of a couple things, but none of them really make any sense to me:
1) The terrorists in Iraq are a primary threat to the United States, and the war in Iraq is a way of “going on the offensive” against them; forcing them to use their time and resources to avoid getting captured or killed by American forces instead of plotting an attack against the American homeland. The problem is that it wasn’t Iraqi terrorists who attacked us on 9/11, or who bombed the USS Cole, or who attacked the WTC the first time in 1993. In fact, I can’t think of a single attack act of terrorism outside of Iraq in which Iraqi terrorists played a key element. This was a good justification for the invasion of Afghanistan, but not Iraq.
2) The terrorists look for the easiest American targets they can find; by engaging in a war in Iraq, we are giving them easy military targets to attack, so that they will go after the troops instead of going after American civilians at home. The problem, of course, is that I’m not so sure why the terrorists would be so easily duped. If Osama bin Laden and his people wanted to plan another attack on America, I’d think they’d just do it, whether we were fighting in Iraqi or not.
So what does that statement mean to you?
I believe it is supposed to mean that armies have to defend their own turf before they can go on the offensive. After all, if Mexico were to invade the U.S. tomorrow, we’d have to pull back our forces to deal with the threat to our homeland.
While Al-Queda isn’t an army in the traditional sense (something Bush apparently forgets now and again), there is the belief among some that the basic principle is the same.
The other possible interpretation is that Al-Queda sees Iraq as a fertile ground for a home base if they can just get the U.S. out of there (because of the political instability and whatnot), and so its a high priority for Al-Queda to become prominent in Iraq, and that takes precedence over attacking the US.