WASHINGTON -- Contending that the U.S. is not pursuing a sound strategy for keeping Americans safe, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Tuesday that fighting al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan would be his top priority after ending the war in Iraq.... "By any measure, our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy for keeping America safe," Obama said. "In fact - as should have been apparent to President Bush and Sen. McCain - the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was."
By any measure, ANY rational person should be able to recognize by now that the war in Iraq isn't, and never was, about the war against terror. At least it wasn't until we invaded and created our own de facto terrorist threat, which we then had to pledge to fight to the death. So, in a twisted sort of way, we actually are fighting the war against terrorism in Iraq...but if Iraq is in fact "the central front in the war on terror", it's because Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader's © illegal and immoral war made it so.
For any intelligent, rational person to claim without a sense of irony that the war in Iraq has made the country a safer place (et tu, Joe Liebermann) is to whiz past ridiculous and head straight to sublime. Where did we first direct our fury after 9.11? If memory serves, it wasn't Iraq; it was Afghanistan. Why? Because that's where American intelligence had established that those responsible for the 9.11 attacks were holed up. You could have been forgiven for thinking at the time that we would have continued bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age until we had either killed or captured those who had murdered 3,000 innocent Americans on that terrible day. Of course; Afghanistan has no known oil deposits.
Almost immediately, The Worst President EVER © and his neoConservative thugs were plotting to move the war to Iraq. Hey, that's where the oil is, remember? Never mind that there was no terrorist threat extant in Iraq prior to our invasion of it. Saddam was a bad man, Iraq has oil...so what other rationale did we really need?
Five-plus years later, and it turns out the Barack Obama was right all along. No, he's not a military mastermind. He's never served in the military, never faced enemy fire...and never spent time in an enemy POW camp. And yet, he STILL makes more sense went it comes to the war in Iraq than ANYONE in the White House or the McCain campaign. The Right may smear him for advocating what they sneeringly refer to as "cutting and running"...but, what, like they've got a better idea? All this war has earned us is more than 4,000 dead Americans, gas above $4 a gallon, and worldwide enmity. Nice work, eh?
Anyone care to explain to me exactly WHY Obama is so mistaken about Iraq? Which of his public positions on the war have been proven wrong? How, exactly, has he displayed his foreign policy inexperience and naivete?? Go ahead...I'll wait....
