Let's Fight 'Em Where We Find 'Em

The President has vetoed the original war funding bill. Tomorrow he's inviting Congressional leaders of both parties for a Pow-Wow. I'm pretty sure the eventual outcome will be a proper funding of our troops. This is all just politics, and I can't really fault the Democrats for their efforts. It's how the game is played.

More importantly, we must decide if we are even going to pursue our enemy outside our borders. That's the first order of business. If we decide to act according to the Bush Doctrine, we will find 'em, fix 'em and destroy them. Ancient war fighting from Sun Tzu to Clausewitz and all that. The only other option is to hole-up on our side of the world and hope they leave us alone. But, when one considers bin Laden's words with regard to the US, that does not seem to be the proper strategy.

Our enemy's leader, bin Laden, issued at least two fatwas against our nation. The first in 1996 and the second in 1998. He called for Muslims to kill American military and civilian personnel until we "withdraw support for Israel and withdraw military forces from Islamic countries." (Wikipedia, Osama bin Laden) Does anyone else see any significance in the dates of the fatwas and the first of his two reasons for the proclamations?

Besides his fatwas, there was the first WTC attack, the attacks on our two African Embassies and then there is the USS Cole. None of these events had anything to do with Iraq. And now Iraq is infested by al-Qaeda. As bin Laden's boys are in Iraq in big numbers, aren't we fighting the proper enemy, regardless of venue?

For the purposes of this discussion, I will stipulate that bin Laden had little to do with Iraq. Saddam was a secularist, and Iraq and al-Qaeda were tangentially related at most. In no way would I argue that this low-level involvement in Iraq would be sufficient reason to oust Saddam. Further, while I firmly believe there were WMD there before the invasion, that they have not been found does not in any way change my feelings about the invasion. Remember, like it or not, all the intelligence agencies in the whole world said he had WMD, so no calling anyone a liar - mistaken if you must be disparaging, but not a liar.