More Reaping

In his book Soros talks about how overreacting to terrorists tends to play into their hands. A commentary on the admittedly wildly partisan Democratic Underground does put it into words rather well.:

"I tell you what, George. No matter what Zarqawi might have been doing right now if you hadn't started the Iraq war, he wouldn't be doing it with 800,000 pounds of Saddam Hussein's dynamite.

This is what just drives you mad if you listen to it for too long. 'If we left Saddam in power, terrorists might have gotten weapons from Saddam Hussein and used them against us!' Cheney chortles, when asked for the millionth time to explain why in God's name we started this war. Might have? Well then, thank God that instead of living with the remote possibility we went out there and made it inevitable. By going to war the way he did, Bush ensured that Al Qaeda would inherit Saddam Hussein's arsenal. We're goddamn lucky he didn't have any weapons of mass destruction."