Originally Posted by FunkMachine

Oh, one thing I forgot to say.

Our enemies prey on our lack of conviction.

In Somalia, al Qaeda was emboldened when President Clinton pulled out the troops. Had he kept them there, it would have said "we shall not be defeated". But as it happened, the message was "if you kill some of our troops we will turn tail and run away".

Same in Iraq. If we leave, the jihadis will know they can beat us. So, we can either choose to lose a trickle of troops now or we can choose to lose alot more troops and civilians at a later date. We are fighting now in the hope that our children will not have to. Even though I don't have children of my own, if I did, I wouldn't want them to face a massive nuclear-armed Islamic Caliphate, because they would die, and not because of their own fault but because of the fault of those alive now who would rather turn tail and run in the face of the enemy.