February 20, 2007 - The President, having seen almost every justification for his war in Iraq evaporate before his eyes, likes hastens to remind us of 9-11 and a smoking gun that just might be a mushroom cloud.  His administration is fond of telling us that Iraq is the central theatre of our war on terrorism.  It isn't.  The central battlefield against Al Qaeda and Islamist terrorists is George Bush's neglected war in Afghanistan.  It is there where Al Qaeda and the Taliban confront us.  It is from Afghanistan and the Tribal Areas of Pakistan that international Islamist terrorism is being directed.  It is there where the United States and its NATO allies are losing the battle.

Another tired justification for the Iraqi War has been to wave the bloody shirt of terrorist attacks and declare that, "We are fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here!"  Bin Laden too is invoking that strategic doctrine.  "If he fights us in Baghdad he won't have to fight us in Kandahar.  Better, if he can foment a civil war in Iraq and embroil our army in the midst of it, then he will not have the troops left to effectively occupy Afghanistan."  Bin Laden has more effective in implementing the strategy than has Bush.

Senator McCain warns us that if we withdraw from Iraq he can "guarantee" that the result will be chaos and a spate of terrorist attacks by a resurgent and encouraged Al Qaeda.  President Bush warns us that if we withdraw from Iraq the shattered country will become the safe haven for Al Qaeda that we took away when we ousted the Taliban from power.  In the abstract both of those proposition has a certain logic but it is a logic not based upon the facts on the ground. Al Qaeda and their host Taliban have their safe haven in Pakistani Waziristan and the Afghanistan provinces.

Our puppet's writ runs only to the edge of Kabul.  We have been no more successful in pacifying Afghanistan than the Soviets before us and the rival empires of Britain and the Czar in the century before them.  Al Qaeda is still there.  The Taliban is still there.  All we have done is to bomb a Stone Age society back to the Stone Age and, as Rumsfeld said, "bounce the rubble".   That being done we diverted our attention to an easier target than Mullah Omar or Bin Laden, left them to lick their wounds and gather their resources while we created the conditions to permit the intractable sectarian struggle quietened in past by an iron hand to erupt anew in Iraq.

"Victory" cannot be won in the Iraqi desert.  It can only be found near the Khyber Pass.
All the bluff and bluster and surges in Iraq bring us no closer to victory over terrorism.  Reinforcing our Iraqi garrison by 21,000, or even 210,000, will not bring that result one step closer.  It will only extend the respite that we have allowed Bin Laden to regroup, refit, and plan.  Before we take comfort in the fact that it has been five and one-half years since 9-11 we should reflect on the time elapsed between February 1993 and September 2001.

The American inning in the Afghan Great Game is barely begun.  The President would do well to reflect that he cannot escape history - that he will be remembered in spite of himself!