Quote from AAAintheBeltway:
As for whether "Iraq has lead to more terrorism", I think it has in Iraq obviously, but there is a good argument that it has led to less elsewhere. Compare what happned during the period leading up until 9/11 with what has happened since.
That's the bottom line. Certainly the demise of the Baathists has further destabilized Iraq. However for you twentysomethings who get your news off of Yahoo, I'll clue you in on something. Even BEFORE the invasion, Baghdad would routinely suffer 5000 murders a year. That's a HUGE number by ME standards (or even SA standards). Considering that little of it was rival crack gangs duking it out you can surmise that much of the killing even when Saddam was still in power, was sectarian in nature. Crime in Iraq just wasn't newsworthy by the Western media until 2003. Today it is. If A (sectarian violence) occurred before B (U.S. troops in Iraq) then it's difficult to quantify my how much, or if at all, B causes A.
I doubt the motive for a nun being murdered in Somalia is U.S. or Israel related.