While reading the local newspaper yesterday, I saw a poll on the presidential race that showed what Americans were concerned about going into the November elections. What I found interesting about this poll and what inspired this article was the choice of issues that were offered. It was not the first time I saw a poll that divided the issues in this way, but it made me wonder why pollsters and the people responding to them consider these issues as separate.

What concerned me was the idea that the Iraq War and the general “War on Terror” were two different issues altogether. Many Iraq War opponents don’t consider Iraq as part of the overall War on Terror (WoT). To them, the threat of terrorism is equated only with Islamic extremism – Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden in particular. The fact that Iraq was a terrorist regime and is currently the central front in the WoT is ignored. But by not considering Iraq as part of the WoT they practically assert that the real or grave threat is Islamic extremism – which they also want to pretend is not a problem.

In any case, the Bush Doctrine – which is used to justify our actions against hostile governments and terrorist organizations – is not about Islamic extremism; it is about combating terrorism/terrorists and the regimes that support them. On September 20, 2001, President Bush made the following statement:

“From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”

This was not a statement about fighting a narrowly defined problem, or only Al-Qaeda. Combined with the notion of protecting our national security through pre-emptive strategies, it became a policy of eliminating terrorism by severing political connections, stopping funds, and preventing attacks by fighting the terrorists on their soil. It’s about standing up to countries that harbor and support terrorists and convincing them that it is in their best interest to stop doing so. If they choose to continue, it should be our policy to deal with them accordingly in order to protect our national security and interests.

In other words, fighting Islamic extremists falls under the scope of the general WoT. Iraq does not fall under the definition of a radical Islamic regime, but it most certainly does fall under the broader WoT. The Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein didn’t just support terrorism – there was a branch within the regime that was dedicated to carrying out terrorist acts.

The Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) cooperated with organizations like the Fatah – Revolutionary Council, the Palestine Liberation Front, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad Organization (once led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s deputy) and Iraq harbored leaders like Abu al-Abbas. The IIS was also responsible for carrying out and coordinating attacks around the Middle East and Europe. The idea that Iraq and terrorism are and ought to be entirely separate issues is not only factually inaccurate, but it’s completely absurd. The threat from Islamic extremism and the fact that the Al-Qaeda organization under Osama bin Laden attacked our country does not preclude every other terrorist organization – or regime that supports them – from being dealt with by the United States and its allies. Saddam Hussein presided over a terrorist regime, and with his history being taken into consideration, his regime was next in line to be reined in after the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Many of the opponents of the Iraq War apparently don’t make a connection between a terrorist-supporting regime and terrorists. Based on this flawed understanding, it seems that the terrorists alone are the culprits and we only have the authority or the right to fight them alone or to only fight once we have been attacked by them. It would appear that they feel the regimes that support or harbor terrorists can only be culpable if the organizations they sponsor actually carry out an attack on the United States itself. Because Iraq could not be directly tied to major terrorist attacks on the United States before the war began, it should have been off-limits despite the previously enunciated doctrine that established them as a “hostile regime” due to their support for terrorism. Instead, the opponents of the war focused on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and denounced the war when much of the intelligence on WMD was discovered to be flawed. Today, the notion that Iraq is part of the WoT is disregarded completely, even though the connection to terrorism was known well before the war and has been further confirmed after it.

The fact of the matter is that the “War on Terror” is about combating terrorism and those who support the practice. Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime both supported and carried out acts of terrorism. One of the reasons for going to war with that regime was due to these facts. Therefore, the Iraq War absolutely was – and is – part of the WoT. To deny that is to deny the entire effort to eradicate terrorism and terrorist regimes, which was the original reason for going to war in both Afghanistan and Iraq – to eliminate the threat to our national security by fighting terrorist organizations abroad and disrupting their ability to carry out their goals with the help of friendly governments.

Iraq and Afghanistan are two fronts in the same war. The goals of those two regimes may have been different, but the threat from both of them was the same. One left us naked and bleeding. The other wasn’t going to get that chance.