In pour President's haste to leave Afghanistan/Pakistan/Iraq, are we setting the table for mass murder?
Just when you thought it was safe to leave Iraq, al Qaeda is back -- with a vengeance.
According to The New York Times, al Qaeda operatives are undoing the Anbar Awakening, which secured the American surge back in 2008. Under a hailstorm of brutal Islamicist violence, the Sunni sheiks living there are now abandoning their pro-American stance and going back to the terrorists.
Meanwhile, we learn that Osama bin Laden, far from cowering in a cave with goats as his only friends, is holding court in northwest Pakistan and even supervising operations from his base -- while other al Qaeda operatives stream back into Afghanistan for new attacks. That puts still more pressure on a government that's on the verge of tossing in the towel to al Qaeda's old ally, the Taliban.
In short, the work of almost a decade of US counterterrorist and counterinsurgency operations -- at a cost of thousands of US lives plus uncounted Pakistani, Afghan and Iraqi soldiers and civilians -- is coming unraveled. We're staring at the possibility of the entire region becoming a permanent al Qaeda base.
How ironic that this comes under President Obama -- who during the presidential campaign excoriated George W. Bush for neglecting al Qaeda in order to invade Iraq.
The reason is simple. This president has made it clear that his most urgent priority isn't victory or even regional stability, but getting every American out of there -- so that he'll be able to say at the 2012 Democratic Convention, "I brought our troops home."
In the process, he'll have left a disaster that will make post-Vietnam Southeast Asia -- boat people, "killing fields" genocide and all -- look like "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood," because Pakistan's nuclear weapons are at stake. [Emphasis mine-SW]
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Meanwhile, winning is only going to get harder. Bin Laden, al Qaeda and their allies have studied America's success in Iraq and adjusted their strategies across the region accordingly. They're confident that, before long, Obama will hand over all three countries to them -- along with Pakistan's nukes.
Can anyone say, looking at this administration, that they're playing a long shot?
Apparently I am not the only one who worries that renewed American isolationism (sentiments more closely associated with the Progressives since the Vietnam War) will lead to a disaster.
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