When Redeployment Means Retreat

Sen. Barack Obama has said he wants to deploy troops from Iraq to where al Qaeda is. Has Obama been paying attention to the Defense Department and intel agency briefings? Has he been paying attention to the news in the New York Times and elsewhere?

Apparently not.

Al Qaeda is in Iraq. They've been in Iraq for some time now. You may think that they came to Iraq after the US invaded in 2003 or that they were there all along. The thing is that they're there now. And Obama and the other cut and runners in Congress want to ignore that inconvenient fact.

Andy McCarthy gives them a dose of reality:

Folks, let's not let these guys get away with this. By "redeploy," they don't really mean move the troops to where they say al Qaeda is. They don't want to fight al Qaeda. If they wanted to fight al Qaeda, al Qaeda is in Iraq — that is indisputable. Bin Laden has said repeatedly that Iraq is the central battle. You can argue about whether al Qaeda has been in Iraq all along or whether they are there only because we've drawn them there. Reasonable minds differ on that. But however they got there, they're there.

If you really want to fight al Qaeda, you stay in Iraq.

If you really believe al Qaeda is not in Iraq — that the real al Qaeda is only in Afghanistan and its environs — then you're on drugs. But, sure, fine, "redeploy" our troops ... to Afghanistan. But can we please have five seconds of honesty? You guys don't have the slightest intention of doing that. You don't want to go to Afghanistan. You want to go home.

When you say redploy, you mean withdraw. You don't actually want to "focus on the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11." You are content to bring the troops home and leave "the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11" to build a safe-haven in Iraq even as they continue to make mayhem in Afghanistan.

You think Bush is incompetent and "his" war in Iraq is a terrible mistake? Fine. You think the price of that is that we should pull everyone out of Iraq even though we all know that will be a monumental victory for al Qaeda — geometrically abetting its future fundraising and recruiting for future terrorist attacks on America? Fine.

It's what I've been saying for some time now. The war in Iraq is central to the war on terror, and most members of Congress seem to recognize this, even if the Democrat rhetoric suggests otherwise.