Miguel A. Guanipa, in the course of analyzing Obama’s vulnerabilities in the presidential campaign, debunks the conventional leftwing meme that it is American action which produces terrorism, the contemporary political equivalent of the medieval belief in the spontaneous generation of pests and vermin from decaying matter.

With the irreverent chutzpah of a snickering 8 year old tattler telling on his older sibling, Obama indulged an excitable crowd of adoring fans with the rather overused and unproven refrain that — contrary to McCain’s beliefs — Al Qaeda was not present in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion. …

To suggest that American intervention begets more terrorism denotes a subtle endorsement of the novel diplomatic principle that a policy of retreat and noninvolvement would automatically yield better relations with the consistently volatile potentates of Middle Eastern regimes. This simple-minded sequitur continues to galvanize radical leftwing Democrats, who are already sold on the proposition that there is an inverse link between the number of terrorists in the world and the level of what is generally considered by them to be America’s modest record of charity and good will through its international relations role.

It is true that terrorism did not make the headlines as frequently when the United States remained basically uninvolved in the political affairs of countries that harbored terrorist organizations. This does not mean that the latter were heretofore virtually nonexistent and suddenly sprang up in response to the United States’ unjustified military intervention in other countries’ affairs.

This is not only a gross misunderstanding of the reasons for the existence of terrorism, it also dishonors the sacrifices of those who have the courage to be proactive about it, and what is worse, it casts them as the culprits in front of a global audience.

By effectively engaging the terrorists, America has simply forced them to expose their clandestine operations, which only the ill-informed would deny have long been in existence. Until they reached an apex of sorts on September 11, 2001, the media had decided that such operations scarcely merited their attention. Since then, simply recycling the same old tune, that it is our fault terrorism has become such a problem around the world, no longer represents a viable argument against intervention anytime the sitting president perceives a clear threat to national security.