Fighting the Wrong War

Even while President Bush has gotten us mired in a civil war that is rapidly bankrupting us -- not just in financial terms, but also morally, ethically and politically -- he is ignoring the more important war to be fought. Perhaps "ignoring" is the wrong word, as he obviously thinks he is fighting a war on terror. He's just fighting it on the wrong front. It's as if Roosevelt, instead of ordering the D-Day invasion at Omaha Beach, had the troops land on Ipanema Beach.

A withdrawal of troops from Iraq does not mean we are surrendering in the war on terror; it would instead mean we would be able to shift our resources and fight Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations more effectively by taking the war to where they are, rather than fighting them on a battlefield in which our positions are known. We should be using our advanced military and intelligence systems to discover their hiding places in Pakistan or Somalia or wherever they are and take the fight to them. In Baghdad, the insurgents and terrorists can, to a great degree, engage our troops when and where they want. I'd rather see us smoke them out of their hidey-holes and kill them there.

Here is a similar take from yesterday's Marine Corps Times.