It should be fairly obvious by now that the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq hasn't crippled world terrorism. Belligerents have not only scored increasingly bold and deadly attacks on coalition troops in Iraq, they've launched devasting strikes elsewhere, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Morocco, while attacks in Israel continue unabated.

More difficult to assess is whether our attacking Iraq made matters worse than they otherwise would have been.

''We have carried the fight to the enemy,'' Bush asserted in September. ``We are rolling back the terrorist threat to civilization, not on the fringes of its influence, but at the heart of its power.''

Rolling back the threat? By what measure? Bush makes it sound as if he chose the best course of action to defeat terrorism. More likely, all attacking Iraq did was mobilize the world's terrorist organizations by offering them a venue rich in sitting ducks dressed in U.S. fatigues.

''We're inspiring terrorism,'' said Jessica Stern, author of the book Terror in the Name of God and a lecturer at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. ``The Bush administration didn't seem to have anticipated the extent to which terrorists would be drawn into Iraq and the extent to which they would be inspired by our occupation to attack elsewhere.''

Terrorism is elusive and adaptive. Were American troops not in Iraq, we wouldn't have roadside bombs detonated as U.S. soldiers drive by, for example -- a tactic specifically designed for the Iraqi theater. Such types of attacks are directly linked to our occupation.

Not prevention

We can't know how many more al Qaeda-style attacks such as those in Istanbul and Riyadh might have occurred had we not entered Iraq, but our invasion clearly hasn't prevented them. By creating a new theater for terrorism in Iraq, and simultaneously tying up the resources we could be using to fight terrorism elsewhere, it's hard not to conclude that invading Iraq hurt, rather than helped, the campaign against terrorism.

Such an evaluation would unravel yet another Bush administration justification for the invasion, to go along with the nonexistent threat from weapons of mass destruction and the flimsy linkages between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. If we now must conclude that the invasion exacerbated world terrorism, then we've wasted over 400 American, perhaps 8,000 Iraqi lives, and $165 billion, just to remove a defanged tyrant who was causing little misery outside his own borders.

Bush, however, continues to assert that we've accomplished something marvelous in Iraq. It sounds like more of the same blind bravado that has come to characterize this administration.

As long as Bush refuses to confront reality, matters in Iraq are likely to continue deteriorating. U.S. troops will be a provocation to terrorists if they remain in Iraq, yet pulling them out hastily could embolden terrorists to believe America is, in fact, weak.

Solution is replacement

Thomas Sanderson, a terrorism analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the best solution is to replace U.S. troops in Iraq with those from countries, including Muslim states, that won't be viewed as American clients. That, in turn, would help cool the anti-Western anger off which terrorism feeds, he said.

The United States needs to ''stay there and do everything in its power to get other troops in there from Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt and Morocco,'' Sanderson said. ``You need the imprimatur of the U.N. That's the only option. Getting out is not an option; staying in isn't much more of an option.''

Bush would have to ramp down his ego and scale back his dubious vision of a world that genuflects before the U.S. military machine. Given his recent statements, the occupation is likely to endure even more profound misery before Bush considers this wiser course.

Copyright 1996-2003 Knight Ridder

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