"Safer" is a relative term that better describes a feeling rather than a reality. You may have had a sense of feeling safer, but the reality is...the terrorists would not have been sitting on their hands during the last five years, they would have been freely training and preparing in the areas we currently occupy and they would have done so totally unchecked. Then, they would bring their bloody terrorism to us and our allies within our borders. Even though Iraq was not the responsible party for 911, Saddam had to be dealt with and the void left behind would have been even more chaotic than it is right now. And with Iran waiting on the sidelines...the only reason they did not invade Iraq already is because we are there. I am all for making our borders and our transportation systems more secure. That would certainly make us all feel safer. But, in a free society such as ours, it will be nearly impossible to make us secure enough to actually be safe.

No. There are "terrorists" everywhere. In America, and everywhere else in the world. We will never stop them. And we never know they are terrorists until they do something bad, to let us know. I don't think it makes a difference where we are, there will always be someone new to "fight". Every generation, every country, we all have major "evils" to deal with.

The best strategy against terrorism is to get into their heads:terrorists violate many Islamic tenets and this should be used against them. http://satanistterrorist.blogspot.com/

Iraq wasn't a terrorist stronghold. There was no terrorism coming from there. Thanks to our own actions, we drew terrorism into Iraq. We did Iraq a huge disservice in that sense. Afghanistan was a completely different story.

I think we would not only be safer, but we wouldn't be so many trillions of dollars / thousands of lives in debt and the center of many other countries hatred. Go figure.

No. No country can ever totally secure it's borders. The threat would still be there. I think we have lessened the threat a lot by taking the fight to them instead of waiting for them to strike us again. It's always better to fight your enemy on turf belonging to neither of you. I think that's a big reason why we went to Iraq.

If we had focused on Afghanistan and gotten Osama like we should've, it would've sent a very potent statement to the Islamic Terrorists: That we don't care what you think Allah wants; We will hunt down and get those who f**k with us. But nooooooo, Bu$h boy had to go and 'defend' his daddy's honor.

The invasion of Iraq probably created terrorists. There were no terrorists in Iraq before the invasion; Iraq had nothing at all to do with 9/11. (There was a repellent dictator, but he didn't allow anybody he wasn't in complete control of to operate). There are now almost certainly cells of Al Qaeda in Iraq. On the other hand, walls will never stop terrorists. They can, at a huge price, slow them down and divert them onto other targets (most terrorists are attacking the troops nicely put in their line of fire instead of the homeland). Put until the underlying causes are solved, terrorists will continue to pop up. And the strongest of the underlying causes is Palestine: until the Palestinians have a decent quality of life somewhere, US soldiers will continue to die and terrorists will continue to target US assets.

We would be slightly safer, but also would have saved 4000 American lives and countless (some people think 1.25 million)Iraqi lives, as well a 3.1 Trillion dollars.

Probably not SAFER but I would have opted for upping our border security instead of going to war. I would have made going to war our LAST OPTION. I just think we caused more harm than good from jumping into war.

that has always seemed obvious to me. I don't pretend to know everything, but strength from within should be "understood".

Your question is best answered from a couple ways: In any extended combat, one cannot defeat the enemy by fighting with a totally defensive philosophy. The battle must be carried to him or it will ultimately end in your own defeat. That said, such "wars" consist of both defensive AND offensive strategies. On the subject of "making our boarders safe...": Safety is a relative term, not an absolute. As such, the point of diminishing returns applies as well. Safe from ALL terrorist actions? Not possible. Can we IMPROVE our safety posture? Yes. How far should we go? (What are the reasonable goals, in other words.) You tell me. There are those who say "if it saves even one life, it was worth it" to justify any expense. I disagree. It is a physical impossibility to assure the safety of every single person out of 300,000,000 in the entire country, much less any given individual. That is the reality, and to deny it is to be an idiot. Yet, if we DO deny it, there will be untold numbers of people demonstrating against it. Case in point: A great many people (myself included) are rather p*ssed at the insane security measures in place at airports now. And there is constant b*tching about it. But let ONE act of terrorism occur on a plane or in an airport and watch how many more people come out of the woodwork pointing fingers and blaming people and organizations for NOT doing enough to have prevented it. It's a Catch-22 situation: D*mned if you do, d*mned of you don't. And terrorists know this and play it up, then sit back and watch the fun as hate and discontent is sown between the government and the citizens. This is their goal. Whether or not any specific country is, or was, invaded after 9/11 is irrelevant to this point. If you want to effectivly combat terrorism, you CANNOT just sit back and fight a purely defensive battle and have any expectation of winning. History has proven this time and again, and it's not gonna change.

The securing our country and borders would have to be done very carefully so as not to turn into a police state and I'm generally against isolationism, which the securing part ido beleive would promote. After 9/11 I was in shock and total awe. I still saw parked, empty cars, directly in front of store fronts and other public buildings. Bill Maher wrote sort of a cartoonish commentary or satire "if you ride alone you ride w/ Bin Laden" Just saying, we're all just status quo, we want something done but don't want to change our habits. The simple example of carpooling and all the guzzling of middle east petroleum w/ the fact that we arent' working together.

The only way to combat terrorism is to change the hearts and minds of the terrorists at their source. There should probably be an initial house cleaning by cutting off the heads of the organization. Going after Bin Laden was probably a good idea. It wouldn't have stopped terrorism but would have given al Qaeda a shock and slowed them down. After that you can concentrate on the reasons for their actions and work on their support network. What you want is to give reasonable people a reason NOT to attack your country. You do that by showing that you are not out to conquer their country, you just want to stop criminal behavior. Do things to improve the lives of ordinary citizens. Work with Saudi Arabia to stop the funding and encourage liberalism in the country. The more you bomb, the more enemies you make. Iraq was already contained, there was no reason to go there. Afghanistan needed a government, the people suffered under the Taliban. Working with the tribal leaders rather than forcing an oil executive to run the country would have been a better use of our soldiers, time and money. The trouble with having a strong army and a morally corrupt State department is that your only tool is a gun. The previous administration did almost everything exactly wrong. We now have a big expensive problem that may never be cleaned up. We would have done better sending in the Peace Corps rather than replacement troops. It is too late now. We have and are creating new generations of fundamentalists and terrorists.

Invading Iraq was a huge mistake - and most of the crap they do at the boarders is a joke....and yes - if the bush regime had done things intelligently from the get -go we would be safer now than what we are. I can't stress what a waste of men and resources the Iraq war was and still is - it set our anti-terrorism efforts back years - and only increased the number of terrorists out there who hate us rather than reducing the number. Come to think about it - maybe actually INCREASING the terrorist threat was the Bush regimes idea in the first place....because that's certainly all he accomplished in the matter.