Staying On Task

In order that it be clear, I will restate simply here what I said indirectly before about the London bombings.

This is NOT justification for invading Tehran or Pyongyang. The people who are responsible for the bombings in London are almost certainly spread out. They are not going to make themselves easy to find. This was the case after 9/11. When the job of finding Osama bin Laden got tough, we shifted targets. That was a mistake.

Now we are hearing rhetoric that is almost verbatim what we heard in late 2001 and early 2002, before prosecuting the war in Afghanistan. I was dubious that it was real then, and the military action in Iraq, passed off as somehow connected to 9/11. I am dubious now. I hope now, as I hoped then, that I am merely expressing a healthy scepticism, as it is known. We'll see. The side benefit of the war in Iraq, combined with dismal recruiting numbers (for many months now the Army has missed goals by at least 40%), is that the United States has not the military reserves to do much of anything anywhere else. Sometimes it can be good to be tired.