Taking on Al Qaeda

I caught part of the debate last night on the Senate floor on mandating a fixed deadline for withdrawal next spring. Apparently Democrat Mary Landrieu of Louisiana has forgotten what bin Ladan looks like as she trotted out a large visual aid. Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio seems to think Al Qaeda is everywhere but Iraq. He's willing to bear any burden but that of supporting our troops. He just wants to "protect them". Perhaps AQ is in Ohio. So if Brown brings our troops home I imagine he will protect them here as well, hmm? Pass a few laws, that'll do the trick. Make a few speeches on the Senate floor in between naps on the rollaways.

Ah, but Al Qaeda is in Iraq. Other Dems quote the NIE report that Al Qaeda has learned much about us in Iraq, and may use that information to come here. Ah, but we have learned a few things about them as well, as they pull in jihadis from other countries to fight us. Concentrating their strength, concentrating our minds. We just captured a major AQ bad guy. AP:

The U.S. command said Wednesday the highest-ranking Iraqi in the leadership of al-Qaida in Iraq has been arrested, adding that information from him indicates the group's foreign-based leadership wields considerable influence over the Iraqi chapter.

Khaled Abdul-Fattah Dawoud Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, also known as Abu Shahid, was captured in Mosul on July 4, said Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a military spokesman.

"Al-Mashhadani is believed to be the most senior Iraqi in the al-Qaida in Iraq network," Bergner said. He said al-Mashhadani was a close associate of Abu Ayub al-Masri, the Egyptian-born head of al-Qaida in Iraq.

Bergner said al-Mashhadani served as an intermediary between al-Masri and Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri.

"In fact, communication between the senior al-Qaida leadership and al-Masri frequently went through al-Mashhadani," Bergner said.

"Along with al-Masri, al-Mashhadani co-founded a virtual organization in cyberspace called the Islamic State of Iraq in 2006," Bergner said. "The Islamic State of Iraq is the latest efforts by al-Qaida to market itself and its goal of imposing a Taliban-like state on the Iraqi people."

Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman pointed out last night that Al Qaeda itself views Iraq as the central front in the war against the West, and has said so several times. And Al Qaeda is in Iran. According to this part of the NIE report, which the Dems have ignored, Sunni Al Qaeda is being expressly supported in Shiite Iran. Are the Dems willing to pursue AQ in Iran if we leave Iraq? Sen. Sherrod of Steel Brown?

Dick Durbin chimed in, as quoted in the NY Times: “Many of these senators have been back home telling their constituents they’ve given up on the president’s policy in Iraq,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat.

“Well, the question is, will they have the courage now to vote with those who want real change?” So what's your plan Sen. Durbin? Let's debate that. If you have the courage. And then there's the feckless Barack. (Where's the battlefield, where's Waldo?)

There are a few Republican Senators who also have cold feet, as hopefully chronicled by Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post, but they are Senators respected only in their own states, and they don't want to micromanage the war. That is one major lesson from Vietnam, that LBJ constantly second-guessed our generals. The other is this---as Meyerson and the gutless Dem wonders in the Senate conveniently forget as they predictably bring up the Vietnam analogy--- when we left there was a bloodbath. There was tremendous carnage not just in Vietnam, but millions were butchered in Cambodia as we abandoned the region. How does giving a date certain for our departure do anything but convince enemies and allies alike that we can not be relied on? It's every man for himself, hardly an atmosphere conducive to political reconciliation, which is what the Democrats say they want.

And as Sen. Lieberman points out, the light footprint the Dems advocate after the pullout is the same strategy that failed us in Iraq the first 3 years of the war.

We need to let General Petraeus pursue the new counterinsurgency strategy, which has already yielded tangible benefits on the ground in Anbar and now Diyala province, allying with tribal sheiks who have turned on Al Qaeda's brutality:

Sheikh Abdul Sattar al Rishawi, founder of the Anbar Salvation Council, gave similar reasons for his change of allegiance.

When al Qaida ran Baquba, it would amputate the two fingers used to hold a cigarette of any Iraqi caught smoking. Men who refused to grow beards were beaten, as were women for the "sexually suggestive" behavior of carrying tomatoes and cucumbers in the same bag, Mr. Yon said. He recounted finding the bodies of beheaded children.

We are taking on Al Qaeda in the Sunni triangle, Saddam's favored provinces surrounding Baghdad, his core of support, and we are building trust and turning the tide of the war. We can win this war, and we must. Otherwise, Dems, we will see a thousand Darfurs. Or maybe just a mushroom cloud over an empty hole of a city somewhere.

UPDATE: Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe:

Three decades ago, similar arguments were made in support of abandoning Southeast Asia to the communists. To President Ford's warning in March 1975 that "the horror and the tragedy that we see on television" would only grow worse if the United States cut off aid to the beleaguered government in Cambodia, then-Representative Christopher Dodd of Connecticut retorted: "The greatest gift our country can give to the Cambodian people is peace, not guns. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now." So Washington ended military aid, and Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, which proceeded to exterminate nearly 2 million Cambodians in one of the ghastliest genocides of modern times.

On April 13, 1975, four days before the communist reign of terror began, Sydney Schanberg's front-page story in The New York Times was headlined: "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, A Better Life."

Did we have a civil war in the US when Al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11? or in London on 7/7? or in Bali, or Spain?

Do you want an uncivil war on terror here Democrats? Try to turn the other cheek, you may find your head cut off. Al Qaeda targets women. They bake little boys and serve them up for lunch to their parents. You Dems have been reading too much of the MSM, which serves your own talking points back to you. You need to get out more.