President Bush, in his latest press conference, said, “The American people have got to understand the consequence of leaving Iraq.” I think he’s right. Before we can genuinely call for our troops to leave Iraq, we have to know what the end result of that process will look like. We have to know what failure means.

According to the President, failure in Iraq is…:

• A civil war between Sunnis and Shi’ites
• Innocent civilians living their lives in fear
• The creation of “a safe-haven for terrorists”
• A message to reformers in the Middle East that the US has “abandoned our desire to change the conditions that create terror.”
• The first domino
• The creation of a more dangerous world
• Chaos in the region
• Telling our troops that they sacrificed for nothing
• A failure to secure our own country
• A sign that “we will have lost our soul as a nation”

We have been (and will continue) looking at these descriptions of failure. Today, we look at his third description.

Failure is the creation of a safe-haven for terrorists.

What does it mean to create a haven for terrorists? For models, I suppose we have the Taliban-run Afghanistan, which knowingly allowed Osama Bin Laden to safely reside within its borders. Perhaps we also have Lebanon, which is not strong enough to force Hezbollah to disarm. One may also add Ireland to that list, where the I.R.A. (and its various splinter-groups ) have been a tangible force for decades. And before we bought them off in a post-9/11 world, Libya would probably have been included on a list of terrorist havens.

Technically speaking, however, the U.S. State department, in its Country Reports on Terrorism defines a terrorist safe haven as “an area of relative security exploited by terrorists to indoctrinate, recruit, coalesce, train, and regroup, as well as prepare and support their operations.” The State department continues, “In most instances…areas or communities serve as terrorist safe havens despite the government’s best efforts to prevent this.” Lebanon’s government would be an example of this last one, as would Ireland’s.

Apparently, if the United States were to leave Iraq, it would become not only a haven for terrorists (it could be called that now, I suppose), but a safe haven. The emphasis on safe implies that the people who would eventually come to power in the wake of the United States’ withdrawal would allow terrorists to reside within their borders without having to fear any harassment from the Iraqi power-structure. They would be able to set up their training camps, their madrasses, and their bank accounts in “an area of relative security.”

The question we have to ask ourselves, however, is if we think this is true. Would our withdrawal from Iraq actually create a safe haven for terrorists? Or would it, perhaps, simply allow Iraq to proceed down its own path? The insurgents are not fighting because they want terrorists to take over the country. They fight because they don’t want the U.S. to control their destiny. It’s not about “insurgents.” It’s about rebels. And we are the empire.

The President has said that if “we leave before the mission is done, the terrorists will follow us here.” Leaving aside the Foxified fact that the mission has already been accomplished, aren’t we all agreed that terrorists — otherwise known as people who violently oppose the hegemony of the U.S. — are going to be around for the long run? Is there really anybody out there who thinks that, in a technologically advanced world, where one person has the potential to kill thousands of people using materials bought at the local farm-supply outlet, “terrorism” is something that can be defeated militarily? Leaving Iraq or staying in Iraq will do nothing to change that.

The State department also wrote, “[the Internet allows] terrorists to fulfill many of the same functions without the need for a physical sanctuary…“virtual” havens, are highly mobile, difficult to track, and difficult to control.” Terrorists don’t need a physical safe haven when they already have a virtual one. If there desire is to attack the United States on a grand scale, that is, if they wish to fight the type of war that has traditionally been fought, then, yes, they need a physical location to train their troops. But as 9/11 made clear, the type of training used by today’s enemies can be found in flight schools in the United States itself, and as the nuclear threat of Iran and North Korea makes even clearer, the training occurs in the chemistry classroom.

If failure in Iraq is the creation of a safe haven for terrorists, then perhaps we should stay. But the truth is that any small closet equipped with a Bunson burner is a safe-haven for terrorists, and the U.S.’s military presence in Iraq will do nothing to change that.

Come back on Tuesday to read “Failure Is Not An Option: Part 4.”