Signaling Terrorists

Steve Coll has an interesting blog entry reviewing a book on foreign policy. Here is a quote:
"He documents richly the consensus among Bush Administration decision-makers, outside of a few realists such as Richard Armitage, that among other purposes, it was necessary to invade Iraq in order to send a general deterrent signal to all terrorists in the Middle East."

The book goes on to point out that this sort of message is not only a message that would be directed at state actors, but state actors who resembled the U.S. Terrorists are not discouraged by such a message. Instead, the actions inspire more to become terrorists in response to the perceived threat of the U.S. to their group identities (which is not necessarily a nation, but a people or a religion).

Now, I think the neocons had more up their sleeves than this, but this is pretty stupid. I think oil was also a big part of the motivation. And has been a big part of the reason for our militaristic presence in such numbers in the Middle East since World War II.