Originally Posted by
Callous1970
Actually, you can.
First, you "thin the herd". Bush did this after invading Iraq. Yes, I know the official story was WMD, but that was never why we went into Iraq. That was an excuse to justify going in. The real reason we invaded Iraq was to change the battlefield. On September 11th, 2001 the battlefield for this war became any US city against any US civilian. The only deciding factor on when the next attack would happen was how hard it would be to get more terrorists in place in the US and equipped. But we moved the battlefield and the target by invading Iraq. Now, instead of unarmed civilians in US cities being the target, it was well trained heavily armed US soldiers in Iraq, and instead of needing lots of logistics and planning to attack civilians in the US, a bunch of dudes could hop in an old truck anywhere in the Middle East and drive to Iraq to try their hands at killing Americans. It is estimated (I don't have a link) that 750,000 young muslim men grabbed their guns, headed to Iraq to kill Americans, and died trying. I believe Dick Cheney referred to this as "draining the swamp" - AKA drastically reducing the recruiting pool of potential terrorists.
Second, you change the culture from which potential terrorists are recruited. Where do they come from? Almost exclusively from the multitude of dictatorships in the Middle East and North Africa. And what have we seen happen in the 12 years since? Muslim nation after muslim nation either peacefully or through revolution seek to overthrow their leaders-for-life and install new, elected governments. And what is the other result from this? They're usually now too busy fighting each other to worry about America.