Fighting them there or here

One of the common arguments against a surrender in Iraq is the notion of "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here." The premise being that if we stop fighting the jihadist/Iran coalition in Iraq, it will free up a ton of jihadists to continue their war against Western culture elsewhere, including Western Europe and the US.

This position is roundly scorned on most of the political left and on the isolationist right, who believe that the jihadists in Iraq will...well, I'm not really sure what they believe there, I guess that they will lay down their arms and start flying kites or something. It is the idea that you can just disengage from those whose stated goal is to kill you and that they will just stop trying to achieve their goals.

Well, the idea that jihadists in Iraq will take the fight elsewhere now has some compelling support. It now appears that the terrorists in London and Glasgow were directly recrutied by the current leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, and that the mission was ordered by former AQiI leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

It's also interesting that they used professionals, in this case medical students who became physicians, because they are easier to get into other countries via fast-tracking visas. The old saw that terrorists are a product of poverty, grievance and discrimination has to be dead by now among serious thinkers; they have consistently tended to be much more prosperous and much more highly educated than the Muslim populations at large.