Orwellian Obama

Obama has purged mention of his criticism of the surge from his website. How Orwellian. Or it could be the latest version of that Obama magical thinking.

As I've said before, Barack Obama is always looking for a better war he thinks might be worth his time, but I don't think he'll ever find his perfect war. John McCain calls him on it:

"Sen. Obama is departing soon on a trip abroad that will include a fact-finding mission to Iraq and Afghanistan. And I note that he is speaking today about his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan before he has even left, before he has talked to Gen. [David] Petraeus, before he has seen the progress in Iraq, and before he has set foot in Afghanistan for the first time," McCain said.

"In my experience, fact-finding missions usually work best the other way around: first you assess the facts on the ground, then you present a new strategy."

Obama says Iraq is not the central front in the war on terror, but al Qaeda thinks it is--and who would know better? John Hinderaker, Powerline:

As to al Qaeda--the elephant in the room--Obama simply dissimulates:

Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been.

That's not what Osama bin Laden (Iraq is where the "Third World War is raging”) or Ayman al-Zawahiri (Iraq is "the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era”) say. Al Qaeda summoned jihadists from around the Muslim world to go to Iraq to fight American troops, declaring that this effort is the central front in their war against civilization. Those jihadists have been devastated by American armed forces, who have thereby scored what may, with hindsight, turn out to have been the decisive victory in the war against Muslim extremism. Obama denies all of this in a single sentence, without citing any evidence whatsoever.

As Hinderaker points out, Obama never supported our being in Afghanistan either. (If he had maybe he would have encouraged our kids to learn Pashto. Didn't you ever read Michener, Barack?) And Christopher Hitchens on the war between the wars:

If there is one element of moral and political certainty that cements the liberal consensus more than any other, it is the complacent view that while Iraq is "a war of choice," it is really and only Afghanistan that is a war of necessity. The ritualistic solidity of this view is impressive. It survives all arguments and all evidence.

Hitchens enumerates, including this:

Many of the al-Qaida forces—most notably the horrific but now deceased Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—made their way to Iraq in the first place only after being forcibly evicted from Afghanistan. Thus, if one did not want to be confronting Bin Laden fans in Mesopotamia, it was surely a mistake to invade Afghanistan rather than Iraq.

To quote George Orwell, " To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. "

P.S. Yellowcake. See that yellowcake.

--crossposted at UNCoRRELATED