Cause and Effect, Revisited

Al Qaeda in Iraq is surging and we aren't there to combat them. This must be profoundly confusing to our Left.

Hey, remember when anti-war protesters said that our presence in Iraq motivated Islamists to flock to Iraq and that if only we were gone, the cause of the jihadi presence in Iraq would be eliminated? Leave Iraq and we'd magically eliminate the motivation for jihadis to go to Iraq.

If only we didn't fight in Iraq, al Qaeda wouldn't have flocked there (once the Left even admitted al Qaeda was in Iraq, of course).

Yeah, I remember.

Indeed, I've noted that Syria is an uncomfortable counter-factual for the simplistic notion that jihadis flocked to Iraq because--and only because--we were there. Since the foreign jihadi presence in Syria is larger than in Iraq, that kind of messes with that simplistic notion.

Now we have Iraq today as a counter-factual for the Left's views on what ticked off jihadis in Iraq then. Yes, indeed, if only we weren't in Iraq.

Life was simpler, then, for the Left. Now the Left may have to consider (forfend!) the problem is the Islamists and not us. The Left may have to consider just what doesn't tick off jihadis?