The recent uptick of attacks on Western targets in Afghanistan and suicide bombings in Pakistan (see photo) expose the faulty premise of the Bush administration’s terrorism strategy: the notion that Iraq is the “central front†in the war on terror.
There is an al-Qaida element in Iraq, and U.S. troops have made progress in hunting down terrorists, but clearly the situation is much more complicated.
The terrorists have no need to fight where we think they should. After all, this isn’t a conventional war. Even if we put terrorists on the run in Iraq, they can regroup in Pakistan and Afghanistan and cause trouble there with a guerrilla war, as they’re doing now, while we’re still in Iraq.
