Same threats, different vision

ARTICLE: Bush Faces Pressure to Shift War Priorities, By Michael Abramowitz and Peter Baker, Washington Post, December 17, 2007; Page A01

The pressure here is real and growing, yet another reason why the drawdown in Iraq has long been a done deal--successful surge or not.

We are indeed heading back toward the zero hour of this administration: threat-wise, we're coming back to roughly 9/11, only this time we're paying attention and the military is focused on the source point.

Comments

[Ted O'Connor]

Thanks to a terrific job by the U.S. military and the CIA folks in country in Afghanistan we have managed to disrupt Bin Laden's operations. The quick reaction by intelligence services in Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain disabled cells in those countries that were ready to follow up with attacks right after 911. We have bought a lot of time.....but this is going to be a very long war. I believe Bin Laden would like to strike the U.S. homeland before President Bush leaves office. OBL's egomaniacal insistence on spectacular attacks has ironically worked in our favor. The grander, more complicated the plan...the more vulnerable it is to counter measures. Even if Bush manages to leave office before another attack the Jihadist leadership will want to "test" the new President, whoever that may be. Children born after September 11, 2001 will be entering first grade soon and they have never experienced an attack on our country. That is a good thing.

[Jeff J]

Tom has mentioned several times that the US has to prove that it can be succesful in nation building before you will get any help from India, China and others to help eliminate bad actors from the world stage. Iraq was the first test which seems to be going in a positive direction and Afghanistan will be the next. Africom is hopefully getting ahead of the curve in Africa. January 2009 should open another opportunity diplomatically.