Aug 10, 2004
Flypaper and Hayekian Realities
Via Crooked Timber, more empirical evidence from the Brookings Institution demonstrating the fallacies of the flypaper theory. If you recall, Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan, and countless other defenders of the war argued that American intervention would encourage assorted foreign terrorists to flock to Iraq where they could be conveniently picked off in shooting gallery style.
Instead, the occupation has fostered a new and unanticipated problem: a large and growing homegrown insurgency. The study estimates that the number of foreign fighters has risen slightly in the last year while the ranks of Iraqi insurgents have increased four fold.