Still Hunting Terrorists Where They Aren't

You remember the joke: A guy walking down the street at night comes across another guy searching the ground under a streetlight. First guy says, "What are you looking for?" Second guy says, "I dropped my keys in the alley back there." First guy: "So why are you looking for them over here?" Second guy: "The light is better here."

The light was better in Iraq, so Smirky/Darth searched there for the terrorists they lost in Afghanistan.

Now the light is better in Afghanistan, so the Pentagon, repugs and Blue Dog warmongers are searching there for the terrorism supporters who are laughing at them from their U.S. taxpayer-funded safe havens in Pakistan.

dday at Hullabaloo explains:

We know right now that there are no signs of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. As long as we're listening to the commanders, General Petraeus said this back in May, and so has General McChrystal just last month. Both of them maintain that Al Qaeda maintains undefined "links" to insurgents, but they aver as an absolute that Al Qaeda forces are not in the country, having moved to areas of western Pakistan and the border region. Just today, the President said that Al Qaeda has less than 100 core fighters overall and has "lost operational capacity," and that their presence has diminished significantly in Afghanistan.

And yet, we know right now that the Taliban may control as much as 80% of Afghanistan. This report by the International Council on Security and Development from September of this year authoritatively estimated this.

SNIP

So the Taliban has been in control of at least half the country for at least two years, more than enough time for Al Qaeda to pack up from the border region and reinstall themselves into these safe havens. Skelton stated specifically that if the Taliban regains hold in "all or part of Afghanistan," Al Qaeda would return to plot attack. Well, the Taliban control lots of the country. But Al Qaeda aren't there. They don't need to be.

This persistent lie about Al Qaeda's aims in the region underpins the entire case for escalation, just the way the domino theory underpinned consistent troop buildup in Vietnam. And yet nobody in the media, up to and including Chris Matthews today, has bothered to challenge this basic falsehood. Nobody has asked the question, "If Al Qaeda is so desperate to find a safe haven, why haven't they returned to Afghanistan now, when the Taliban controls large swaths of the country?" It's not like they aren't under as much threat from drone attacks in Pakistan as they would be in Afghanistan.

There are also the points to be made, that the Taliban was ejected from the country the last time they gave Al Qaeda safe harbor and wouldn't appear likely to do so again, and that this Taliban is a home-grown movement with little influence from foreign fighters, and that the whole idea of "safe havens" in a world where terror attacks have been planned from inside Spain, Germany, Britain and even the United States is a false one. But accepting this argument on its own terms, and putting aside these points, it's still undermined by the facts.

Will anyone present these basic facts to the "serious foreign policy" dittoheads when they go on and on with a demonstrably false argument about safe havens and how we must send as many troops as possible into danger or we'll all be killed in our beds?

Read the whole thing.