I love the title of the post. "Still Smoking Crack About Iraq"

Commander Jeff Huber at Pen and Sword:

"If we withdraw before the job is done, the enemy will follow us here.''

-- Attributed to General John Abizaid of U.S. Central Command, which encompasses the theaters of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan

How will they get here, General? That's a long way to swim.

[...]

"They" don't have an air force or a navy that can bring them here. Nobody else does either. There is, in fact, no state or non-state entity that can bring significant conventional military force to bear on the continental United States.

Moreover, if "they" did have an air force and a navy and tried to use it to invade us, they'd be doing us a favor. Our Navy and Air Force could sink them and shoot them down before they got halfway across the ocean.

And if we take this ludicrous scenario just a bit further, it would actually make sense to "withdraw" and sucker them into trying to invade us. We could mop them up in the course of fine Navy day.

There is, of course, a problem with this operational scheme. If we withdrew, they would probably be smart enough not to squander their navy and air force in a doomed effort to invade and occupy a country halfway across the world.

Which would make them a darn sight smarter than Abizaid or anybody else in charge of this woebegone war on terror.

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