Will /can someone please explain to me why

[Auntie Bush]

if we don't fight them there we will have to fight them here.
If we leave Iraq they will follow us home and attack us here?

What's the reasoning behind this meme? I don't get it! Yet they repeat this mantra so many times they think it's a reality. How can so many people believe that when I can't even understand that rational? What am I missing? :shrug:
(No wise ass comments please.)

[purduejake]

1. We've destabilized the region enough...

That it seems inevitable that it will become a haven for extremists once we leave. The bottom line is that we shouldn't have gone there in the first place because now we've opened up something without an easy solution, but I don't think keeping troops there is helping anything.

[NMMNG]

2. It's just their asinine way of rationalizing continued presence in Iraq

Nothing more. :shrug:

[JohnnyLib2]

3. Fear sold that line, fear sustains it, and it's damn hard to undo.

I'm lousy at remembering citations, but ambitious leaders across history have used the threat of "them" attacking, over and over.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

4. Check out congress bill # h r 663 new direction in Iraq

[bluerum]

5. It is a threat. The threat is that we will be attacked if we don't attack first.

It is a not so subtle fear mongering and rabble rousing slogan that appeals to the simple minded and the fearful.

[krispos42]

6. Basically, if we leave Iraq a mess, it will become theocratic

Muslim theocratic. And they will really really hate us for a) invading and ruining their country and b) interfering in the MidEast to keep the oil flowing.

The Islamic Republic of Iraq will become a state sponsor of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism, which will strike out at Western nations, particulary us.

The lesson here is that don't fuck with the status quo unless you can do better. We did it in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we can't, or won't, do better than what was there before.

It's BushCo's fault for doing it in the first place.

[billybob537]

7. We have only confirmed the extreamists

message that Americans want to attack and kill them even if they mind their own business and threaten no-one.

[MasterDarkNinja]

8. It's a fear tactic that says Iraqi's causing us trouble from Iraq = terrorists

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

9. And why are the people we liberated now called the enemy ?

[knowbody0]

10. it is such a shameful statement

fighting them "there" where life means less? morons!

[Sparkly]

11. I guess they picture it all as a big playground.

They want to think of it in very finite, simple terms: A finite number of "bad guys" who we can keep "busy" there, so they don't come here.

It's totally STUPID. People who say it are parroting, and people who believe it have no idea what's going on.

[Auntie Bush]

12. Now that's the smartest answer I've seen yet.

:woohoo:

[Raven]

13. Thank God you asked...

I was trying to frame the same question and couldn't get it expressed as well. It seems to me that what they are really expressing is: you have an enemy who attacks you on your soil; best thing to do is invaid some poor hapless country, lure that enemy there, and use the people of that country as pawns and human shields...so, we have the enemy but we won't stand and fight here, we'll go somewhere else and destroy another country to do it...I don't want the enemy here but we ought to be taking care of our business without decimating some other country that didn't have anything to do with the conflict in the first place...am I making any sense?

[mtnsnake]

14. It's just a RW scare tactic. Those people over there just want us the fuck outta there

and minding our own business.