Reply #22: You're missing the point. [View All]

[I work for workers]

It doesn't matter if the people who keep he lights off are terrorists, militia, or looters. All that matters is that they don't come back on. All the AQ Iraq members can die, and as of now it seems they are, and Al Qaeda can still pull a victory if Iraq remains mired in chaos.

Hopefully Iraq will pull itself together at the grassroots level and that stability and trust will eventually work its way up. The former looks to be happening, the latter doesn't. Will that require a US military presence in the near future? Probably, at least to a small degree.

I seriously doubt the neocons really knew anything about what they were getting into. As far as I'm concerned they came up with a nice sounding theory and tried to implement it in the worst possible way. I can understand the principle of the original democratic counterbalance goal, but the time for that has long since passed, if it ever existed. At this point so far as I can tell the most urgent goal is to disprove the AQ operational plan by stabilizing the nation.

Either way I expect infrastructure destruction to be the biggest terrorist threat in the near future. This has all become a conflict of degrees between many groups inspired to use the tactic and a few bolder groups employing it. A few small scale campaigns might be slight enough to stay a minor hassle. A widespread outbreak would be another story entirely. The developed world would be powerless to stop it, particularly if the global economy had to sustain severe damage as a result.