In a world where terrorists recruit angry young men (and women) to kill civilians, sentiment is the most important currency we trade. The fewer angry young men (and women) there are, the better off we will be.
The right doesn't seem to get this. They convince themselves of the rightness of military action, ignoring ten thousand years of history teaching us how violence always engenders anger. You attack someone and kill their relatives, they won't generally care if your reasons were good. Instead, they will hit back. Ask Israel and Palestine, both of whom have very legitimate gripes.
Many of us on the Left have been arguing since before the invasion of Iraq that the cost in sentiment would be immense, which would fuel terrorist recruitment. There hasn't been a lot of hard data to date, but today the Pew Center released a new set of polls. The results? People in muslim countries overwhelmingly believe that the U.S. is exaggerating terrorism and that the War on TerraTM is in fact a cover for an agenda of World DominationTM.
Which is of course ridiculous, which is my point. Angry people who feel attacked will believe whatever they want to justify their anger. The folks in Jordan and Pakistan think we're coming after them, because they've seen us bomb the crap out of fellow Muslim nations Afghanistan and Iraq. I don't for a minute think even Bush is after World DominationTM.
The majority in three of the four countries surveyed - Pakistan, Morocco, and Jordan, now feel that suicide bombings are justified against the West. The majority. Talk about a recruiting ground for terrorists. Even in the one country which disagreed (Turkey), 31% feel suicide bombings against Americans are justified.
The right convinced themselves, as any good moral neanderthal does, that "Showing Strength" would "Win Respect" in the middle east. Predictably, we've pissed them off instead.
