My friend Byron has helped me to see that I should have expressed myself a little more clearly in the first paragraph of the post immediately below this one.
The reason I wrote that the claim that the war in Iraq has been a wonderful recruiting tool for terrorists is absurd is not because the war hasn't brought an increase in the number of terrorists. It doubtless has. The reason I think the claim is absurd is because when anti-war people make this claim the implication is that had we not gone to war in Iraq there would not be as many terrorists world-wide as there are.
Now there's certainly no absurdity in believing that this is so, but as long as there are good arguments to the contrary it is an overreach to say that it is so - as though it were a demonstrable fact when it clearly is not.
Are there good arguments to the contrary? I think one could plausibly maintain that the greatest recruiting tool for terrorists would be signs of American weakness and vacillation. Had we refrained from invading Iraq it's quite possible that many young Muslims would have been emboldened to join the ranks of what the imams would be assuring them is an army destined by Allah to destroy the infidel West. They would have been convinced, conceivably, that Allah had delivered the irresolute Americans into their hands and they would be eager to join the side of the victors.
This is certainly plausible and no one can know that this would not have been the way things would have worked out had we not invaded. Thus it's absurd to imply that the war has made things worse than they would have been had we not invaded. It is to claim a kind of knowledge that no one has or could have.
That was my point in the preceding post, but I'm afraid I didn't make it as clearly as I should have.
RLC