Durbin's future war

Democrats like Dick Durbin only want to score short-term political points and refuse to look at the disastrous consequences of their actions. Over the course of the Iraq War, their talking points have collided enough times to power a nuclear reactor.

Most recently, experts such as General Petraeus and pulitizer prize author Lawrence Wright, author of the definitive history of al-Qaeda, The Looming Tower, have said that Iraq is now the focal point of al-Qaeda's operation. Think back a few years and it was the Durbin liberals who were screaming we were fighting the wrong enemy in Iraq. What say you now, Dick? Chicago journalist Jeff Berkowitz asked him this week and Dick Durbin became Duck Durbin.

Jeff Berkowitz: If Al Qaeda were to establish, after the U. S. left Iraq, a safe haven for terrorist camps, as existed in Afghanistan [in 2001], would you then recommend that the U. S. go in and do what they did in Afghanistan?

Senator Durbin: I am not going to get involved in conjecture about potential invasions in the future. We have seen one invasion that was made over four years ago that has gone terribly bad. We have lost over three thousand, three hundred American soldiers, spent over five hundred billion dollars, have many injured soldiers coming home and many still in the field. This war is far from over. That was an invasion that was supposed to be quick. In the words of this Administration, they were going to greet us like liberators, with flowers in the street. Before we start talking about the next invasion, the next circumstance, we ought to step back and see if there is an alternative—short of military force—to bring real security to America.

What Durbin and his colleagues aren't saying in their poll-driven rhetoric is that retreating from al-Qaeda will not make our enemies go away. It will strengthen them. They will attack us again in America and we will go right back to the Middle East to fight them. Next time, the casualty counts will be much higher.

If we had known a few years ago that we had a chance to fight al-Qaeda in one place, in a foreign land, we would have welcomed it. That was then. Since, politics has overwhelmed common sense.

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