The Iraq Trap

According to blogger James Lewis, Iraq is an "ant trap" for al Qaeda:

You don't shoot poisonous fire-ants with a BB gun; you just set an ant trap. Ant colonies are highly "distributed" biological societies, much like the world-wide web. They can't be killed with a BB or a pressure hose; even pouring flaming gasoline on an ant hill won't work.

Instead, you destroy ant colonies by attracting hungry ants to a chemical bait, and then kill them all in one small place. Ant traps work.

That's the Bush strategy in Iraq. Al Qaeda isn't centralized, with big cities or steel industries like Nazi Germany. So you can't destroy the enemy by hunting them one by one. Rather, you bait a trap -- provoke them to come to you, and make sure they don't get out alive.

Please. Are we really expected to believe the president is that bright? Setting a trap for al Qaeda in Iraq was never the plan. Besides, if we really believe they are so decentralized, then why do we brag about every second-rate al Qaeda "leader" we kill or take into custody?

Lewis goes on:

In Afghanistan, they have been on the run since 2003, although the Pakistan border regions continue to supply new recruits. But in Afghanistan they are being destroyed before ever reaching the cities. Add that to a sizable numbers neutralized in Pakistan, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and more. Add to that the cells pinpointed in Europe and America, the Philippines and Indonesia. We are wiping out the fire ants wherever they can be found.

At that attrition rate, every single year we stay in Iraq, we could get rid of another couple of thousand AQ fighters. Yes, we pay a high price -- but nothing like the price that baddies running loose and attacking us at home would exact.

I see. By staying focused in Iraq, we are able to wipe out terrorism throughout the entire world. Is anyone else having trouble following this guy's "logic"? Oh, it gets better.

The syndicated sycophant reveals to us the real reason we are in Iraq: "We therefore have hundreds of thousands of military surrounding the next biggest problem, Tehran." (Seriously. Who didn't see that coming?)

The fact remains that we lose more Americans every day in Afghanistan and Iraq. And yet the ruling elite in Washington and their willing accomplices on both the Left and the Right want us to set our sights on Iran. When will they begin to realize that we are creating more "terrorists" than we can kill?

Iraq was a trap, all right. And we are the ones who fell into it.